The Grand Cardinal Cross of Spring 2014: What you are about to witness is a geopolitical battle that does not have to take place. It has been arranged, planned and set up by the United States government and NATO, which, if they are not very careful, will cause global consequences that had not expected due to the planetary configurations of the Grand Cardinal Cross. Forewarned is foretold.

The Grand Cardinal Cross Of Spring 2014:

Crisis In Ukraine, Crimea, Russia & The West

Russian President Vladimir Putin visits massive military maneuvers that were underway outside St. Petersburg on Monday, March 3rd. He arrived by helicopter to view tanks and paratroopers in live-fire exercises. Along with Putin were Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu (left) and commander Anatoly Sidorov.

Image: Kremlin Press Pool/Associated Press

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"Saint Michael, Chief Archangel of the Almighty Father, defend us in battle; be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.

May the Immortal Almighty Father rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God the Father, cast into Hell, Satan and all the evil spirits, who prowl about the world, seeking the ruin of souls. Amen."

A Mundane Warning To All Concerned:

A very dangerous spring 2014 is on tap for the world, as I forecasted years ago that it would be.

For those of you who want to learn the truths of what is really going down, then buckle in and fully digest this special Vernal Equinox edition of Global Astrology.

The Vernal Equinox of March 20th will officially usher in the new solar year of 2014.

And, as my warnings about this cardinal crisis decade from several years ago have shown, the hue-and-cries, revolutionary sentiments and geopolitical tensions have risen, according to the configurations of the planets relative to Earth.

Only humanity could be so ignorant and stupid as to believe that its actions are solely of its own making when the great majority allow themselves to be influenced by world transits.

That is the height of ignorance.

As the Grand Cardinal Cross of April, May and June 2014 take place, we shall see a range of violence, accidents and geopolitical crises that are the hallmark of the cardinal planetary configurations of the Grand Cardinal Cross.

I urge caution in extended travel this spring through to early summer, in fact, it would be wise of those reading this who have any plans to travel, to cancel their their trips due to the adverse world transits, as accidents and violence in crowded places are presaged.

The world transits also show a series of strong weather-related events, from torrential downpours, hail, lightning and tornadoes.

The spring of 2014 will be very active, so I caution everyone to be extra careful during the months of April, May and June.

Mass events with large crowds will be common. It is wise to avoid large gatherings as the world transits are quite hostile as I have been warning for years about spring 2014.

In this edition of Global Astrology, as in previous editions, I warn all concerned not to go about playing with fire - as they may later discover that it begins plenty of other fires where all can get burned.

The situation in Ukraine, with the Grand Cardinal Cross in play will almost certainly lead to war unless cool and calm heads prevail.

And, as well, Vladimir Putin’s diplomatic skills can also prevent it from happening, however, the Obama administration, the U.S. government and NATO have caused a mess in Europe due to their arrogance, corruption, greed and outright stupidity.

Should the western powers continue their stupidity then they will be to blame for the consequences that will surely come later.

The planetary transits confirm this as a fact. It is truth.

Russian President Vladimir Putin says that he is protecting the Russian Federation's interests, according to international law. The transits of the Grand Cardinal Cross and the forced international crisis caused by the West in Ukraine and the Crimea appears to confirm Putin's long-held suspicion that NATO wants to breach Russia's borders and cause dysfunction, disruption and destruction. Putin's nativity and transits show that he will not allow that.

Yet, Putin has been demonized by Washington D.C. politicians and pundits who work for many of the American print and television media who haven't a clue about what is really going on above their heads and under their feet.

That includes those in the United Kingdom and some on the European continent as well.

What is going on is the emergence of world transits and the Grand Cardinal Cross.

American President Barack Obama: the Grand Cardinal Cross of spring 2014 calls on very careful and very wise decisions by the president against the reactionary ideologists in Congress, his own administration, the U.S. State Department and the entire U.S. government. Obama's nativity and secondary progressions shows that how he handles this crisis will determine his place in American and world history. He had better choose very wisely as planetary transits do not play.

President Barack Obama, meanwhile, should be advised that the world transits of the solar year 2014, particularly the Grand cardinal Cross do NOT support any heightening of crisis.

Moreover, diplomats and foreign ministers worldwide - including U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and the entire U.S. State Department - are advised to tread very, very carefully during the months of the Grand Cardinal Cross this spring, as transiting Mars retrograde in Libra - the sign of the diplomat - is in unfavorable configurations to the other planets that form the Grand Cardinal Cross.

Some of these people are ideological nutcases who are going straight into the many mouths of Hell, into the very body of the Dragon that Jesus Christ himself said was 'exceedingly evil,' -

Those in the Central Intelligence Agency, the NSA, the FBI, the DIA, those in the Pentagon and the State Department, including those in the Obama administration, are playing with very powerful planetary world transits - a Grand Cardinal Cross - which proves how clueless they truly are, despite being given free and ample warning to the contrary of its imminent arrival.

Those who ignore these warnings are heading straight into perdition.

That is a fact.

And, I will tell you even more truth:

The only way to avert it is to repent of your sins, rather, achieve gnosis, and turn fully away from evil, your bribes, your lies, the murder, the theft and all of your negativity to save your own individual souls.

Get yourself far, far away from those who gather, to plot in secret, and remove yourself fully from their presence (you all are surely being watched and recorded in all that you do in secret) or you shall surely be counted among those who will perish - they, who surely are going to be fully assaulted by the Divine Father and there will be no escape.

What He does is absolute and when it is done, no other hand in all the universe can undo what has been done.

Fear that.

Truly, do fear that.

Forewarned is foretold, so don't blame the messenger.

I just work here and can read all astrological transits.

Only cool heads and the ability to reject reactionary and ideological sentiments are essential to neutralizing the Grand Cardinal Cross of spring 2014.

This is especially true concerning the crisis in the Ukraine, Crimea, Russia, Europe and the United States.

Let's examine what has taken place in early March after the Russian military took positions in Crimea at the end of February, just as Mercury stationed direct, and with transiting Mars and Saturn stationing retrograde on March 1-2.

PRELUDE TO 2014's GRAND CARDINAL CROSSUkraine, Crimea & Russia

Analysis & Forecast ByTheodore White, mundane Astrolog.Sci

The Grand Cardinal Cross of Spring 2014 is about intractable problems that have been long festering.

In many ways, it is about a generational establishment that has lost its ability to see past their outdated and outmoded methods from the late 20th century.

I also would add the western governments seeking to cause economic damage to Russia are making the wrong move here, as the global economy is already weak and the cardinal world transits are nothing to shrug one's shoulders at.

I would also advise against acts of sabotage and terrorism which can begin a series of intractable conflicts that could easily get out of hand if world leaders do not maintain a calm, cool and collected attitude.

Reactionary ideologues and low IQ types need not apply. It would be wise to keep those kinds of individuals out of decision-making roles - especially in a Grand Cardinal Cross atmosphere.

Any reactionary sentiments in regard to the current tensions in Ukraine by the West would simply cause a domino effect worldwide, affecting many other nations, including the European Union and the United States.

In the isolated diagnostic chart I cast for Ukraine, we can see that by April 2014, the Grand Cardinal Cross continues to be powerful going into the spring season in the northern hemisphere.

Isolated Diagnostic - Grand Cardinal Cross: April 2014Kiev, Ukraine

click on chart to enlarge

Each of the planets, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus and Pluto are at 13-degrees, in hard aspect (square and opposition) to one another in the cardinal Signs of Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn.

A Grand Cross, or Grand Square configuration, consists of four (4) or more planets spread out at intervals of approximately 90-degrees.

This powerful configuration features two oppositions with four planets that are square to each other.

Mars, retrograde in LibraJupiter in CancerUranus in AriesPluto, retrograde in Capricorn

Now, this configuration differs from the T-square configuration which diffuses energy, as the grand cross configuration focalizes it.

The reason for this is because any one of the planets in a grand cross, or grand square, can be considered a focal point.

These are powerful focalized energy conduits that demand attention.

Therefore, any attempt to resolve any of the problems, with a single planet in the grand cardinal cross configuration, simply aggravates the problems with the other planets in the configuration.

This means that one is forced to scramble, from one crisis situation to the another, without being able to concentrate long enough on a single situation to be able to resolve anything, that is, without causing even more problems in other events taking place at the same time.

Remember, this 2014 cardinal configuration shows a continuous cycle of 'focalized crisis situations,' in each of the planetary positions - Mars, Jupiter, Uranus and Pluto - and those involved are unable to fully resolve the problems associated with each planet that will be in very unfavorable hard aspect to one another, relative to the Earth.

These are focused world transits that call on cool heads along with calm and collected actions that seek to work through peaceful negotiation and understanding, rather than by reactionary and ideological sentiments that only can inflame the problems.

Events of Late February & early March

Ukrainians who live in the Crimea and who speak Russian raise the Russian flag in this image. They say that they support President Putin and add that they are being attacked by neo-Nazi thugs posing as pro-democracy protesters.

On March 2nd, a Russian admiral issued an ultimatum to Ukraine's military in Crimea to surrender as Moscow said the crisis can be defused if the country agrees to take back Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich, who was forced to flee Ukraine at the end of February.

Ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich

The West now faces a real mess," says Paul Craig Roberts, "and so does Russia."

Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy says that, "The presstitutes will keep the American public from ever knowing what has happened, and the Obama regime will never admit it.

"It is not always clear that even the Russians want to admit it. The intelligent, reasonable, and humane Russian Foreign Minister, a person who is 100 cuts above the despicable John Kerry, keeps speaking as if this is all a mistake and appealing to the Western governments to stand behind the agreement that they pressured President Yanukovich to sign.

"But Yanukovich is history, as are Washington’s 'moderates,' Roberts said.

"The moderates are not only corrupt - they are stupid. The fools even disbanded the Riot Police, leaving themselves at the mercy of the armed right-wing nazi thugs."

Now, amid rising international tensions, the Pentagon halted all military cooperation with Russia, including exercises and meetings, Rear Adm. John Kirby said.

This is what I also meant about the dying oligarchy and baby boomer establishment. These old, wrinkled and corrupted 'cold warriors,' who are about to shuffle off this mortal coil, are so entrenched in the past and so spiritually bankrupt that it is not a surprise how they would cause such a crisis to emerge, since that is all they know.

Anyway, the Russian warning came as British Foreign Secretary William Hague on March 3rd called the standoff in Ukraine the "biggest crisis in Europe of the 21st century."

Meanwhile, in Washington D.C., President Barack Obama said that Russia is "on the wrong side of history'' by intervening in Ukraine. He said he is considering diplomatic and economic steps to isolate Moscow.

"Over time this will be a costly proposition for Russia, and now's the time for them to consider whether they can serve their interests in a way that resorts to diplomacy as opposed to force," Obama said from the Oval Office.

The U.S. originally estimated that 6,000 Russian troops were dispatched to Crimea, but Ukraine's mission to the United Nations said March 3rd that 16,000 had been deployed.

That stoked fears that Russia may want to place more troops in eastern Ukraine.

Hague, who was speaking to BBC radio from Kiev, said that Russia is now in operational control of Ukraine's Crimean region and Europe and the United States were discussing what actions to take to reverse the occupation. But, he said that "military actions was not being contemplated."

In the first days of March, at least 4 Russian navy ships in Sevastopol harbor were blocking the Ukrainian anti-submarine warship Ternopil and the command ship Slavutych from leaving the dock, waiting for their commanders' responses, according to spokesman Maksim Prauta.

Vitko, the Russian admiral, was quoted by Russia's official Interfax news agency as calling on Ukraine forces in Crimea to surrender:

"If they do not give up by 5 a.m. tomorrow [March 4th] there will be a real storm of subdivisions and units of Ukraine's military forces all over Crimea.''

Meanwhile, Ukraine's interim prime minister in Kiev remained defiant.

"No one will ever give Crimea to anybody," Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk said at a press conference reported by the Kyiv Post.

"We realize that the Russian Federation has its interests, but we address Russia: you have no right to protect your interests by violating ours."

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to Kiev in an expression of support for Ukraine's sovereignty.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov suggested the crisis can be defused if Ukraine's parliament returned to a Feb. 21 agreement to let president Viktor Yanukovych stay in office until elections in December 2014.

"Instead of a promised national unity government, a 'government of the victors' has been created," said Lavrov, who insisted Russia was in Crimea only to protect the lives of Russians.

Yanukovych fled to Russia after the agreement when it became clear that an opposition movement would not allow him to remain after he presided over the shooting of scores of protesters in Kiev. The parliament voted to oust him and hold new elections in late May 2014.

In East Ukraine, outside of the Crimea, fears grew that Moscow may move troops further into the country as it solidified its hold on the Ukrainian peninsula.

Kiev said that Russian troops and unidentified defense forces sympathetic to Russia controlled all border crossings of Crimea, a key ferry and the two airports.

Global leaders issued a joint statement March 3rd on the increasingly tense political situation in Ukraine as geopolitical fears spread to the world's investment community.

"We, the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States and the President of the European Council and President of the European Commission, join together today to condemn the Russian Federation's clear violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, in contravention of Russia's obligations under the U.N. Charter and its 1997 basing agreement with Ukraine," the leaders said in the statement.

The United States and other nations have already suspended preparations for a G-8 summit that was scheduled to be held in Sochi, Russia, in June 2014

In a bid to reverse a plunge in Russia's currency, the ruble, the Bank of Russia hiked its key interest rate to 7% from 5.5% on March 3rd.

Russia's benchmark Micex index fell as much as 11% and markets across Asia declined sharply. markets later rebounded

"Any attempt of Russia to grab Crimea will have no success at all. Give us some time," Britain's Hague said in a separate news conference in Kiev on that same day, March 3rd.

"For today, no military options (are) on the table," Hague said, adding that what Ukraine urgently needed was economic and political support.

"Real support. Tangible support. And we do believe that our Western partners will provide this support," he said.

Hague said "the world cannot just allow this to happen." But again, Hague ruled out any military action.

Earlier that Monday, March 3rd, Ukraine's interim prime minister said that he thought that the danger had passed, saying he'd been assured by Russia's Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev that Russia was not planning a full-scale invasion of Crimea.

"I think we have passed the peak of the crisis in the relations between Ukraine and Russia."

"My hope is that the words Russian Prime Minister Medvedev said to me that a decision to send troops has not been adopted are true," Yatseniuk told a meeting of European business leaders in remarks reported by Ukraine's official Interfax news agency.

In a move that stunned and angered the Unity government in Kiev, Ukraine's incoming naval commander announced that he switched allegiance to Crimea's pro-Russia administration.

Viktoria Siumar, deputy secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council in Kiev said Rear Admiral Denis Berezovsky, who on March 2nd, took an oath of allegiance to Crimea's local administration, was fired and is under investigation for treason.

Ukrainian military officials say that no Ukrainian servicemen have switched sides to the self-proclaimed Crimean government and laid down arms, according to Ukraine's Interfax news agency.

"Today we are facing absolutely massive amount of misinformation from Russian media that Ukrainian servicemen are laying down the arms," Siumar said.

She said that naval officers in Sevastopol and elsewhere continue to obey orders from Kiev and are not following Berezovsky.

GEOPOLITICAL TENSIONS

Russian Federation's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin heads towards the exit following a tense United Nations' Security Council meeting on the Ukraine.

On Monday, March 3rd, United States Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power tore into Russia's government during an emergency meeting of the United Nations' Security Council on the Ukrainian crisis.

United States Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power

Power accused Russia of an act of aggression, not a humanitarian mission.

She said there was nothing to justify its conduct in escalating military operations in the Crimea region of Ukraine after the ouster of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, an ally of the Russian government of President Vladimir Putin.

"Russia has every right to wish events had turned out differently. It doesn't have the right to express that using military force," Power said.

Power said there is no evidence of any threats to Russian citizens or ethnic Russians in the Crimean peninsula, after Russia's ambassador to the U.N. had suggested Russians are "being persecuted for ideas and language."

"Russian mobilization is in response to an imaginary threat," she said.

Power called for a deployment of human-rights monitors in Ukraine, and called on Russia to "immediately pull back" its forces.

U.S. President Barack Obama said Russia was "on the wrong side of history" in Ukraine on Monday, and warned of potential diplomatic and economic "isolation."

Here is the full text of Power's remarks at the U.N.:

"Thank you Madam President. Listening to the representative of Russia, one might think that Moscow had just become the rapid response arm of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. So many of the assertions made this afternoon by the Russian Federation are without basis in reality.Let’s begin with a clear and candid assessment of the facts.It is a fact that Russian military forces have taken over Ukrainian border posts. It is a fact that Russia has taken over the ferry terminal in Kerch. It is a fact that Russian ships are moving in and around Sevastapol. It is a fact that Russian forces are blocking mobile telephone services in some areas. It is a fact that Russia has surrounded or taken over practically all Ukrainian military facilities in Crimea. It is a fact that today Russian jets entered Ukrainian airspace. It is also a fact that independent journalists continue to report that there is no evidence of violence against Russian or pro-Russian communities.Russian military action is not a human rights protection mission. It is a violation of international law and a violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the independent nation of Ukraine, and a breach of Russia’s Helsinki Commitments and its UN obligations.The central issue is whether the recent change of government in Ukraine constitutes a danger to Russia’s legitimate interests of such a nature and extent that Russia is justified in intervening militarily in Ukraine, seizing control of public facilities, and issuing military ultimatums to elements of the Ukrainian military. The answer, of course, is no. Russian military bases in Ukraine are secure. The new government in Kyiv has pledged to honor all of its existing international agreements, including those covering Russian bases. Russian mobilization is a response to an imaginary threat.A second issue is whether the population of the Crimea or other parts of eastern Ukraine, are at risk because of the new government. There is no evidence of this. Military action cannot be justified on the basis of threats that haven’t been made and aren’t being carried out. There is no evidence, for example, that churches in Eastern Ukraine are being or will be attacked; the allegation is without basis. There is no evidence that ethnic Russians are in danger. On the contrary, the new Ukrainian government has placed a priority on internal reconciliation and political inclusivity. President Turchinov – the acting President – has made clear his opposition to any restriction on the use of the Russian tongue.No one has to explain to Ukraine’s new government the need to have open communications, not only with leaders of the country’s Russian ethnic minority in the Crimea and elsewhere, but also with its neighbors. That is why, when the current crisis began, the government sent its former Chief of Defense to the region to try to defuse the situation. A second emissary was prevented from entering the Crimean Rada to engage in discussions. And it is why Ukrainian authorities have repeatedly reached out to Russia. Russia needs to reciprocate and begin to engage directly with the Government of Ukraine.I note that Russia has implied a right to take military action in the Crimea if invited to do so by the prime minister of Crimea. As the Government of Russia well knows, this has no legal basis. The prohibition on the use of force would be rendered moot were sub-national authorities able to unilaterally invite military intervention by a neighboring state. Under the Ukrainian constitution, only the Ukrainian Rada can approve the presence of foreign troops.If we are concerned about the rights of Russian-speaking minorities, the United States is prepared to work with Russia and this Council to protect them. We have proposed and wholeheartedly support the immediate deployment of international observers and monitors from the UN or OSCE to ensure that the people about whom Russia expresses such concern are protected from abuse and to elucidate for the world the facts on the ground. The solution to this crisis is not difficult to envision. There is a way out. And that is through direct and immediate dialogue by Russia with the Government of Ukraine, the immediate pull-back of Russia’s military forces, the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, and the urgent deployment of observers and human rights monitors, not through more threats and more distortions.Tonight the OSCE will begin deploying monitors to Ukraine. These monitors can provide neutral and needed assessments of the situation on the ground. Their presence is urgently necessary in Crimea and in key cities in eastern Ukraine. The United States calls upon Russia to ensure that their access is not impeded.The leadership in Moscow may well be unhappy about former President Yanukovych’s decision to flee Ukraine and move in with them. Russia may be displeased with the new government, which was approved by Ukraine’s parliament by an overwhelming majority, including members of Yanukovych’s own party. Russia has every right to wish that events in Ukraine had turned out differently, but it does not have the right to express that unhappiness by using military force or by trying to convince the world community that up is down and black is white. Russia’s calls to turn back time to implement the February 21 Agreement ring hollow. It was Yanukovych who failed to abide by the terms of that agreement, fleeing Kyiv, and ultimately Ukraine.The United States categorically rejects the notion that the new Government of Ukraine is a “government of victors.” It is a government of the people and it is one that intends to shepherd the country toward democratic elections on May 25th – elections that would allow Ukrainians who would prefer different leadership to have their views heard. And the United States will stand strongly and proudly with the people of Ukraine as they chart out their own destiny, their own government, their own future.The bottom line is that, for all of the self-serving rhetoric we have heard from Russian officials in recent days, there is nothing that justifies Russian conduct. As I said in our last session, Russia’s actions speak much louder than its words. What is happening today is not a human rights protection mission and it is not a consensual intervention. What is happening today is a dangerous military intervention in Ukraine. It is an act of aggression. It must stop. This is a choice for Russia. Diplomacy can serve Russia’s interests. The world is speaking out against the use of military threats and the use of force. Ukrainians must be allowed to determine their own destiny. Thank you Madam President."

'REACTIONS'

As Russia’s military secured the Crimean peninsula, its currency hit a record low and its stock market plunged in the face of U.S. and European warnings of sanctions over the incursion into Ukraine.

The Obama administration took the first steps late in the day on March 3rd, suspending military cooperation with Russia, as well as talks aimed at boosting trade and investment. Obviously, this was done in a bid to isolate Moscow.

President Barack Obama said that further military moves into Ukraine, he warned, “will be a costly proposition for Russia.”

The State Department said more punitive measures were likely if Moscow does not pull back, but it would not give details. Spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki indicated they would go beyond things like visa freezes to measures with economic bite.

But, European Union foreign ministers backed off any immediate action on sanctions March 3rd, but warned that the EU was prepared to act if Moscow didn’t reverse course.

Moscow dismissed any sanctions as inappropriate and showed no sign of backing down under the pressure, which so far has been primarily in the form of tough talk.

The developments of early March highlighted the limited options to deter Russia which is determined to reassert its influence with Ukraine, with which it shares centuries of common history, culture and economic ties.

By the first week of March, Russian troops occupying the Crimean peninsula in southern Ukraine tightened their control, raising pressure on the few Ukrainian military units based there.

Moscow was said to have drawn up plans for urgent financial aid for the predominantly Russia-speaking region, and even ordered preparations for building a massive bridge to link it directly to Russia.

From Kiev, the interim Ukrainian prime minister admitted that his unity government has little near-term hope of regaining control of the region.

President Vladimir Putin on Monday visited massive military maneuvers under way outside St. Petersburg, arriving in a helicopter to view tanks and paratroopers in live-fire exercises.

The Russian central bank sharply raised interest rates Monday to help stem the ruble’s slide, which could push Russia’s already sputtering economy into recession if the hike lasts for long.

But the impact would be eased thanks to high oil prices—they rose Monday on the turmoil—which would mean the Kremlin’s coffers would likely remain flush with rubles needed to shore up public support. Russia is one of the world’s biggest energy exporters.

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said the direct impact of the Ukraine crisis on the continent’s economy would be relatively limited. Still, he added, “the geopolitical dimensions” of the crisis could have effects that “go beyond the actual links.”

Some tremors were already being felt: U.S. wheat futures surged 4.6% as traders fretted that the escalating crisis will slow grain exports from Ukraine, a major producer.

Rising tensions are clouding sales forecasts and investment plans for global corporate giants such as Renault SA and PepsiCo Inc. that are exposed to Russia’s market.

In Brussels, European foreign ministers condemned what the European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton called Russia’s “act of aggression” in Crimea.

The ministers said that “in the absence of de-escalating steps by Russia,” the EU would consider suspending talks with Russia on easing visa procedures and on a trade and economic agreement.

The warning was an attempt to strike a balance, refraining from hasty action that would foreclose Russia’s ability to save face, while simultaneously signaling that the EU wouldn’t hold off for long.

So far, the pressure on Moscow has been limited mainly to stern rhetoric and canceled meetings, including preparations for the Group of Eight summit in Sochi, Russia, in June. The White House said it won’t send a presidential delegation to the Paralympic Games in Sochi either.

In Europe, at least, there appears to be little immediate appetite for broader sanctions that would upend trade with Russia.

France, for instance, is on schedule to deliver the first of two Mistral carriers, a deal valued at €1.4 billion ($1.9 billion), to the Russian Navy by the end of the year, according to DCNS, the French firm building the high-tech amphibious assault ships.

EU foreign ministers discussed a possible arms embargo on Russia on Monday, but rejected it for now.

Asked Monday whether Moscow’s incursion was forcing Paris to rethink its trade ties, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said: “We’re not there. For the moment, we are trying to stop Russia’s mobilization in Ukraine and establish a dialogue.”

Diplomats said that Germany argued strongly in the meeting for Europe to move cautiously and to ensure that channels of communication were kept open to the Kremlin.

“In this phase, we in Europe don’t have to and must not take action based on rumors, imperfect information and news agency reports,” said German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Along with Russian stocks, which fell about 10%, the shares of Western companies like Renault, Danish brewer Carlsberg A/S and British oil giant BP PLC also fell on fears their big Russian investments would suffer as tensions over Ukraine grow.

“Russia is a very important market for us, much more than just for pure business considerations,” said Johan de Nysschen, chief executive of Infiniti, the premium brand of Nissan, a Renault affiliate. He said that the company was monitoring the situation “very, very carefully.”

Russia is PepsiCo’s second-largest market by revenue after the U.S. The Purchase, N.Y.-based snack and beverage giant has billions of dollars of assets in the country. It declined to comment on Monday.

Entanglements between Russia and Europe go much further than with U.S. companies. Europe is a major buyer of Russian natural gas; Russia is a strong market for German goods; energy companies in Italy, the U.K. and elsewhere have major investments in Russia.

The ties make punishing Russia practically difficult because of the divisions within Europe between those close to Russia and those with less to lose.

But Charles Grant, director of the Center for European Reform, a London-based think tank, warned against exaggerating Russia’s economic leverage over Europe.

Cutting off gas supplies to Europe via Ukraine - a perennial Russian threat - would do plenty of damage to Russia too, he said. “We need (Russia) and it needs us.”

Many companies selling goods into Russia are also facing the prospect of a suddenly weaker economy there.

Russia’s central bank sharply raised interest rates and intervened heavily to stem the ruble’s slide, helping the ruble to trim its losses from a post-Soviet low by the end of that day.

Central bank officials pledged to spend as much as needed to defend the ruble.

“We’re the central bank with the fourth-largest reserves in the world and we can feel pretty comfortable about our ability to influence the situation,” Kseniya Yudaeva, the bank’s first deputy, told state television.

Economists agreed that the central bank could keep the ruble stable even with continued strong selling pressure. But with the powerful world transits, higher rates could squeeze spending if they persist.

The market turmoil could also provide an economic boost for Russia in the form of higher prices for oil and gas, its main exports.

Combined with a weaker currency, that means Russia actually ends up with more rubles in its budget to spend to offset any discomfort from the economic slowdown.

“They can spend more even without needing financing,” said Jacob Nell, economist at Morgan Stanley in Moscow.

Economic sanctions that would hurt Russia without torpedoing the global economy are hard to find, he said. Russia’s oil output is too big for other producers to make up, while shutting off natural gas exports would leave European countries scrambling for other sources.

Import restrictions would also be unlikely to hurt much because Russia produces its own food and fuel.

Targeted visa and financial restrictions on top officials and their families, many of whom own property and other assets in the U.S. and Europe, have proved effective at getting Moscow’s attention in the past.

“There is some real traction there, but it takes some time to work up,” said Mr. Nell.

EU foreign ministers kept that option off the table in early March. But after the meeting, Mr. Fabius, the French foreign minister, told BFM TV that measures could eventually include an asset freeze targeting Russian officials. Asked if that could include Mr. Putin and his inner circle, Mr. Fabius said “that is not decided yet.”

Back in Crimea

Meanwhile, in Bakhchisaray, Ukraine, Russian soldiers just outside an army base in that Crimean city had demands that Monday, March 3rd, for the Ukrainian soldiers inside:

Pledge allegiance to the Russian military or put their weapons in storage, abandon their post and go home.

The Ukrainians refused.

"They must know that should they attempt to storm the base, we will fight back until the last drop of our blood," Col. Sergei Stashenko, the site's Ukrainian commander, told The Times. "Whatever they are up to, we will not allow them to get hold of our weapons."

Outside the base, armed Russian soldiers strolled around on a sunny afternoon, petting stray dogs and joking with a couple of young women in a nearby park. Over the barbed wire, armed Ukrainian soldiers watched their movements through binoculars.

Of the Russian demands, Stashenko was adamant: "This is absurd and totally unacceptable to us. We remain committed to the oath we took before our country and the Ukrainian people."

Throughout Ukraine's Crimea region that Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday March 2-5,, Russia ratcheted up its pressure on Ukrainian forces, demanding their virtual surrender, even as Moscow continued to defy international demands that it withdraw its troops.

A Ukrainian coastal defense unit in the town of Perevalnaya, that was under siege by Russian forces for three days, faced demands that it give up its weapons.

Russian naval forces, which have long leased a base in Crimea, blockaded two Ukrainian navy vessels in the port of Sevastopol and issued what was becoming a familiar demand to the sailors:

Surrender and swear allegiance. The Interfax news agency in Moscow denied that the ultimatum had come from the Kremlin.

Russian troops also seized control of the commercial port of Kerch, on the far eastern point of the diamond-shaped peninsula, and shored up patrols of military installations throughout the region.

Moscow has defended the chokehold its forces have put on the region - which at that point far had not yet led to a shooting war - as necessary to protect Russian citizens and military installations in Crimea after the late February ouster of Ukraine's pro-Russia president.

Russian officials have cast the tumultuous leadership change in Ukraine last month, which drove their ally President Viktor Yanukovich from power, as a "bandits' coup."

Their arguments have stirred fears among Ukraine's Russian speakers, who are a minority in the country but a majority in the east, that their rights and safety are at risk under the former opposition politicians now in power.

The demands being issued by the expanding Russian forces are an alarming sign that they might be in Crimea to stay, one analyst said.

"It means that Ukraine is steadily losing the Crimea to Russia and it will be extremely difficult to get it back, as the Ukrainian army is incapable of opposing Russia," said Kost Bondarenko, head of the Ukrainian Policy Institute, a Kiev-based think tank.

One glimmer of hope emerged but appeared to gain little traction.

During a Sunday, March 2nd phone call from German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly agreed to a fact-finding mission under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

In the towns and cities of Crimea, meanwhile, soldiers and civilians alike expressed fears that the confrontation will turn into a shooting war.

Here in Bakhchisaray, the ancient capital of Tatar rulers, not all of the Russian soldiers seemed committed to the threat to storm the Ukrainian military strongholds unless the troops surrendered.

"We don't need their weapons," said a young Russian soldier who refused to give his name and rank. "I am not going to fight with my brothers and shoot at them. I have many relatives and friends in Ukraine.

"We are here only to prevent the bases' weapons from getting into the hands of fascists and extremists," he said, echoing Moscow's description of Ukraine's new leaders and their supporters.

Close to the gates of the coastal defense unit in Perevalnaya, women who work at the base or have relatives within were gathered, tense and agitated.

"What Russia is doing here is extremely ugly," said Svetlana Gorbacheva, 50, a librarian for the unit and a mother-in-law of one of its officers.

"We are extremely scared that some lunatic may make the first shot and the whole situation will deteriorate into bloodshed, if not a real war between our fraternal peoples."

A shot had already been fired that the first Monday in March, by a Ukrainian soldier guarding a military air base in Belbek, near Sevastopol, the port leased by Russia's Black Sea fleet.

The soldier fired in the air when Russian servicemen threw stun grenades at Ukrainian troops.

After the warning shot, the Russians retreated. But one Ukrainian officer was hospitalized after being lightly wounded by a stun grenade, said Vladislav Seleznev, spokesman for Ukraine's Defense Ministry.

"So far this conflict has claimed no deaths," Seleznev told The Times, expressing fear that any miscalculation could change that. "Russians are using dishonest and unfair arguments.

No one is encroaching upon the lives of Russian nationals in Crimea and no one is threatening the lives of Russian navy personnel stationed here."

Denis Berezovsky, the Ukrainian rear admiral who defected to Russian forces on March 2nd, appeared at the gates of the Ukraine naval headquarters and sought to persuade other Ukrainian officers to cross to the Kremlin's side, Seleznev said.

But the officers gathered inside the courtyard of the base responded - by singing the Ukrainian national anthem.

THE GRAND CARDINAL CROSS

Spring 2014

click on chart to enlarge

April 15, 2014: A Grand Cardinal Cross & Total Lunar Eclipse:

Washington D.C.

As many of you know, for years I have been warning about the Grand Cardinal Cross.

It reminds us all of how world leaders and those who believe that they can 'shape the future' without the proper knowledge of world transits are ignorant.

And this results in the dysfunctions and disruptions we see in the world.

These people are far better off listening to mundane astrologers rather than their own ideological and very limited views and personal interests.

Nonetheless, the Grand Cardinal Cross is transpersonal, but it will affect individuals, especially those with positions and points at or near to the 12-13th degrees of the cardinal Signs of Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn.

On April 15, 2014, there will also be a total lunar eclipse over the United States. The eclipse will occur in tropical Libra as the Moon occults the star Spica. It is a warning - for the White House in Washington DC - which is ruled by that particular star.

The adverse cardinal aspects will build throughout April, then into May and June, being triggered by the transits of the Moon.

Therefore, it is essential to be calm, cool-headed and collected and not yield to reactionary sentiments or ideologies.

The streets of Kiev, Ukraine: February 2014

That is why I have issued many mundane forecast warnings on the solar year 2014.

The Grand Cardinal Cross of April 2014 features a series of events that are striking in their inability to resolve numerous issues that are ongoing and that were not resolved in the previous years.

That is what the world is heading toward by spring 2014:

I call it - the Grand Cardinal Cross.

click on chart to enlarge

The overall series of seven (7) exact Uranus-Pluto World Squares, of which the fourth exact aspect activated on November 1, 2013, will take us to the fifth (5th) exact square of April 21, 2014, and that is smack in the middle of the ongoing Grand Cardinal Cross of spring 2014.

1 March 2014 - Mars stations retrograde at 27-Libra

2 March 2014 - Saturn stations retrograde at 23-Scorpio

6 March 2014 - Jupiter stations direct at 10-Cancer

Then, into the Grand Cardinal Cross of spring of 2014:

10 April 2014 - Mercury heads N in declination

14 April 2014 - Pluto stations retrograde

15 April 2014 - New Moon and Lunar Eclipse at 25-Libra

20 April 2014 - Jupiter squares Uranus

20 Apr 2014 - Jupiter opposes Pluto

21 Apr 2014 - 5th Uranus square Pluto, exact aspect

20-23 April - Strong cardinal transits

From these planetary configurations, it is my assessment that we are heading into dangerous times for 2014, a major cardinal crisis year.

The Holy Week of April 2014 is highlighted for much of the cardinal crisis energies.

Another problem is that there is a lunar eclipse on April 15, 2014, which compounds an already powerful time in the world. It will extend into the months of May and June 2014.

A Grand Cross, or Grand Square configuration, consists of four (4) or more planets spread out at intervals of approximately 90-degrees.

This powerful configuration features two oppositions with four planets that are square to each other.

In the case of spring 2014, these planets are:

Mars, retrograde in Libra

Jupiter in Cancer

Uranus in Aries

Pluto, retrograde in Capricorn

Now, this configuration differs from a T-square configuration which diffuses energy, as the grand cross configuration focalizes it.

The reason for this is because any one of the planets in a grand cross, or grand square, can be considered a focal point.

These are powerful focalized energy conduits that demand attention.

Therefore, any attempt to resolve any problems caused by a single planet in the grand cardinal cross configuration simply aggravates more problems with the other planets in the configuration.

This means that one is forced to scramble, from one crisis situation to the another, without being able to concentrate long enough on a single situation to be effective in resolving anything, that is, without causing even more problems in events taking place at the same time.

Remember, this 2014 cardinal configuration shows a continuous cycle of 'focalized crisis situations,' in each of the planetary positions - Mars, Jupiter, Uranus and Pluto - as those involved are unable to fully resolve the problems associated with each single planetary body that are in unfavorable adverse aspect to one another.

The Uranus-Pluto world squares will bring about more revolutionary sentiments, violence and disruption that forces the status quo into what I consider to be suicidal attempts to regain 'control,'as the status quo is actually losing power.

It will call upon everyone with common sense, intelligence, courage and insight to counter the negativity brought about by the dying oligarchy and establishment that have laid down the groundwork of the dysfunction and disruption that is now in operation.

The spring into mid-summer 2014 is also not a good time for extended travel. I continue to warn about this due to the unfavorable world transits.

Any travel plans you have should be cancelled due to the high probability for accidents and troubles in foreign countries from now through to mid-to-late summer 2014.

My mundane advice is that it is best to stay close to home.

'The Mundane Cyclic Index'

The Mundane Cyclic Index: 1900-2050

We mundane astrologers also employ planetary indexes to monitor the effects of the outer planets in world history.

Generally, the mundane cyclic index shows how the stability, or instability, of the Earth is directly related to the differences in the sum of the phases of all the waxing and waning cycles of the outer planets.

During favorable phases for instance, the world will tend to experience a relative stability with growth. But with unfavorable phases that are negative, the world experiences times of challenge and crisis.

The peaks of the Mundane Cyclic Index will feature lines that adds up all the troughs with mid-way lines between peaks and troughs.

When index crosses a mean line trending up, this marks a point of increased optimism, of growth and favorable global direction.

When the index lines crossed the mean on a down trend, what was seen in history were unfavorable trends to angst, pessimism and destruction.

The French mundane astrologer H.J. Gouchon, who produced this cyclic index in the 1940s, constructed a graph by calculating the total angular separation between each of the pairs of the five transpersonal outer planets.

His work gave an impressive correspondence to international crises - especially concerning wars, as most wars tended to start after the descent from a high peak.

Exploring the index more, the astrologer C. Ganeau worked on the differences between the total numbers of degrees of outgoing mundane cycles, as compared to the total numbers of degrees of incoming planetary cycles.

The mundane astrologer Andre Barbault took on Gouchon's diagram and named it the 'Cyclical Index.'

Barbault showed periods in time and space when multiple conjunctions of the outer planets occurred that would more than likely create times of world crisis.

We are undergoing one of those times now, in what I call the 'cardinal crisis' decade, here in the Twenty-Tens.

Attached with this post, you will see a mundane cyclic index graphic that shows the years from 1900 to the year 2050.

The mundane index plots the angular aspects the planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, relative to the Earth.

The blue lines show the Gouchon-Barbault curve. The red lines show Ganeau's work.

Although Ganeau's lines are more striking, that is due to the fact that it holds more negative values; while Gouchon-Barbault's curves matches more accurately with historic world events.

In the attached mundane cyclic index, you will see that the two major lows of the inex match the events of the First and Second World Wars.

Then, you will see that the Korean War along with and the war in Indochina began just as the cyclic index begins to fall precipitously in 1950. Then, it reaches bottom at the time of the Suez Canal crisis.

The cyclic index goes south yet again with the start of the Vietnam War, but then rises at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.

By the year 1976, the index begins another fall until the year 1984. This span of time, from 1976 to the mid-1980s has these events:

The invasions of Afghanistan by the then-Soviet Union. The taking of hostages by Iranian radicals in 1979. The cancellation of the American participation in the 1980 Summer Games after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. The Iran-Iraq War and horrors of the wars in Lebanon.

Then, as a major stellium in Capricorn neared in 1988-1989 between Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, an upward trend reflected the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985, just as major political reforms were being allowed in eastern Europe.

Just as the fall of the Warsaw Pact arrives with the collapse of the eastern block in 1990, the cyclic index trends down, to about the year 1995. The trend back up reflected the boom years of the United States economy, which peaked in 1998.

After the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction of May 2000, the downturn of the cycle index in 2003 depicts what I consider to be the start of the present global economic crisis that became apparent in 2008.

Then, we see a slight uptick in the index during 2011-2013 showing the Federal Reserves intervention by quantitative easing (amid austerity measures in a number of European nations) and 'sequestration' measures (another word for austerity) in the United States.

That time of relative upraising of the world's economy predates the Grand Cardinal Cross of 2014, which the mundane cyclic index shows a big drop that lasts until the year 2024.

Meanwhile, the proof of U.S. interference and plotting in Ukraine's internal affairs has plenty of evidence to support Putin's claims:

"This is what happens when an arrogant and stupid, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland plots with an equally arrogant and stupid US ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt to put their candidates in power once their coup against the elected president succeeds," says Paul Craig Roberts.

European monitors will go to Ukraine and monitor the grievances of both sides following the Russian seizure of Crimea, achieving its aims without a shot being fired.

Washington is said to oppose this, but in Europe, anger continues to swell after the ‘Fuck the EU’ comment made by assistant US Secretary of State Victoria Nuland in early February when she discussed the crisis building in Kiev.

Nuland, a senior official in the U.S. State Dept. had her private conversation with Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, taped. It was put on YouTube and angered the European Union.

The conversation was about a deal to end the crisis in Ukraine, where, in her discussion with Pyatt, Nuland had some harsh words for her European Union counterparts as well as for Ukrainian opposition leader Vitali Klitschko.

Roberts says that, "The ignorant and deluded who deny any such plotting occurred can listen to the conversation between Nuland and Pyatt here: "

Listen for yourself:

"Fuck The EU?"

'A Mundane Cure'

The only way to settle and cure the Grand Cardinal Cross is to work with the planet or planets that has the greatest number of beneficial aspects to planets that are not part of the April 2014 cardinal configuration.

In this case of the Grand Cardinal Cross of April 2014, that would be the planet Venus, which will be in tropical Pisces.

The secondary planet also not involved in the cardinal configuration is the planet Saturn; however, Saturn is peregrine in Scorpio, wandering as it were in the House of Mars - and the planet Mars is taking part in the grand cardinal configuration from tropical Libra, where its amplitude is turned up by retrograde motion.

Venus in Pisces will enable individuals to redirect the energies for a better flow, but it will require a major ability to see that diplomacy works, despite the powerful cardinal impetus to take action.

That will be nearly impossible on the leadership front, in my view, considering the many boneheads out there who are clearly ignorant of the world around them and the energies working on them by these world transits.

The constant and continuous crisis situations require an understanding and cool-head that many will lack, considering the strong inclinations for them to act, and so act out - and blindly - many shall do.

Therefore, by announcing, repeatedly, to the world, about the Grand Cardinal Cross, we can, before next spring place consciously, in the minds of everyone - including leaders, governments, etc., - knowledge of these world transits.

The mundane cure is to simply allow what is happening to happen without imposing conflict as a way to resolve events.

The energies of the Grand Cardinal Cross will be most evident on those who are radical, unstable ideologues, who will show, by their words and their desired actions, that they are unfit to even be in the room discussing how to address what is happening in Ukraine - and elsewhere for that matter.

Mundane Astrology is designed to help to avert disasters.

So, by knowledge of the natural world around us, we can, by use of our free will, choose not to take part in the external inclinations of the unfavorable world transits in forecasting how these planetary energies attempt to act on the natural world and on those inhabiting it.

It is by knowledge that we are able to shape the future for the better, not the worst.

And, as the Grand Cardinal Cross nears, the mundane cyclic index shows that it could easily spark the beginning of a 10-year period that reflects numerous unfavorable world events, should people not learn to preempt negative world transits with positive outcomes.

And that can only be accomplished by conscious evolution.

That is why Mundane Astrology is about averting disasters.

And that is why 'knowledge is power.'

Now, let's get into what transits tell us are the true reasons behind the machinations over Ukraine and Crimea - natural gas.

The Cardinal Crisis

Global Cooling, Russia, Ukraine, Europe & The United States:

The Battle Over Natural Gas

By

Theodore White, astrometeorologist.Sci

In forecasting the brutal winter of 2014 several years ago, I noted that the anomalous cold temperatures, ice and snow storms of winter 2014 would break records in the northern hemisphere.

And so it did.

The winter of 2014 shows what near future winters will be like under the new climate regime of global cooling that I have also forecasted will soon set upon the entire Earth.

And yet, another of the great bonehead errors that Washington DC and the Obama administration has consistently been making is their stance on ‘climate change.’

I will remind all that despite even President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry saying that ‘man-made global warming is a fact’ - that that is impossible.

Moreover, the solar-forced global warming that has been caused by the Sun since 1980-81 has been on the wane for years and will end, according to my Astromet calculations, in the year 2017.

And the new climate regime that is coming is global cooling, which is far, far worse than global warming could ever be.

In fact, global warming is good for the Earth, but global cooling is not.

And it is global cooling that is coming.

It has been my long-range climate forecast that global cooling will become the Earth's new official climate regime in mid-December 2017 according to my calculations.

It will last approximately 36 years.

Now, we have already seen and experienced the trending to global cooling in the harsh winter of 2014 that I forecasted.

The climate transition from solar-forced global warming to solar-forced global cooling accounts for the extremes of weather that I forecasted we would continue to see in the Twenty-Tens and that is exactly what has happened.

To understand how critical what is happening in the Crimea and Ukraine is, look at the strategic location of Ukraine.

Russia has gone into the strategic Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, and markets are spooked at the possibility that Russian troops that are being built up on the border could enter eastern Ukraine.

As the international tug-of-war for Ukraine continues - the tensions involving economic relations in the region - especially regarding natural gas flow from Russia to both Ukraine and Europe - will increase.

A gas pipeline in a village outside Kiev. About 63 percent of all Russian gas exports to Europe pass through Ukrainian pipelines.

Image: Anatolii Stepanov/Reuters

Germany is perhaps the best example of this.

Germany is heavily dependent on Russian gas and the country is much closer to Russia than it is to the United States, or any other leading western nation.

And, with global cooling on the way, Germany is very wise to avoid any outmoded and outdated western-influenced return to Cold War-style confrontations and the threats and ultimatums coming out of Washington D.C.

That’s because the yo-yos in Washington who believe in ‘man-a\made global warming’ are not even in the same universe when it comes to being prepared for global cooling – which IS coming – despite their ideological and idiot mentalities on climate change.

Snow fell in the 'sunshine' state of Florida during the brutal winter of 2014.

Those in Washington are even in denial about global cooling during one of the most brutal winter seasons in recent memory in 2014.

Satellite image of the Great Lakes region covered in ice and snow during the winter of 2014.

During the recent winter, people saw things that they said could never happen:

It actually snowed on the pyramids in Egypt and throughout the Middle East.

It also snowed enough in Atlanta, Georgia to shut down that major metropolis.

Even in the state of Florida, southerners had to dig out never used winter coats.

The winter of 2014 broke many cold temperature, ice and snow records throughout the northern hemisphere.

Cities in North America were so overwhelmed by the snow and ice that they even ran out of salt for the roads and highways.

Snow fell over the pyramids in Egypt during the winter of 2014, the first time in over a century.

It was actually warmer in Alaska than it was in the 48 lower states of America during the winter of 2014.

That’s how ideological, blind and absolutely clueless they are in Washington and at the United Nations.

And you know what: Mother Nature (that’s the law of physics) does not care in the slightest what you politics, sentiments and political ideologies are.

That’s a fact.

The arrival of Global Cooling calls for cooperation among ALL the nations of the world, not just some, and yet those in Washington DC who are corrupt and outside of their own minds (many will be removed in elections, and then Obama will leave in January 2017) continue to act as if they can walk between the raindrops.

I assure you that they cannot.

Meanwhile, on March 5th, rather than to fly into Russia to meet with Putin himself, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry flew into Kiev, where he offered the interim Ukrainian government a $1 billion energy subsidy package along with a bouquet of roses.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Kiev, Ukraine, March 2014

Kerry delivered the flowers himself, laying them at the spot in central Kiev at the Shrine of the Fallen’ of those shot and killed by snipers working for the Maiden supporters.

Unbelievable.

And, as we can see, this is not about ‘democracy,’ but about money, as I will prove with this incredible revelation from an administration that says it believes in ‘man-made global warming,’ which again CANNOT EXIST according to the laws of physics that govern the Earth’s climate:

According to the Washington Post on March 5th:

'U.S. Seeks to Reduce Ukraine’s Reliance on Russia for Natural Gas'

“The crisis in Crimea is accelerating Obama administration efforts to reduce Ukraine’s dependence on Russia for natural gas, part of a diplomatic push that seeks to undercut President Vladimir Putin’s ability to use his nation’s gas supplies as a weapon.

Republican leaders on Capitol Hill and major oil companies have urged the Obama administration to speed up the nation’s first exports of natural gas.

Although environmentalists, some Democrats and American manufacturing companies that depend on the competitive advantage of cheap domestic natural gas oppose the effort, they have fallen to the sidelines in the rush to export the gas.

At the State Department, an initiative to harness a natural gas boom in the United States as a lever against Russia, underway since 2011, intensified this week as Gazprom, Russia’s state-run natural gas company, said it would no longer provide gas at a discount rate to Ukraine.

Russia supplies 60 percent of Ukraine’s natural gas, and the move was reminiscent of Russia’s previous moves, in 2006, 2008 and 2009, to shut off natural gas supplies to both Europe and Ukraine.

The administration’s strategy is to move as aggressively and swiftly as possible to undercut Russian natural gas sales and any moves by Mr. Putin in future years.

Although Russia is still the world’s biggest exporter of natural gas, the United States recently inched ahead of Russia as the world’s largest natural gas producer.

“We’re engaging from a different position because we’re a much larger energy producer,” said Jason Bordoff, a former senior director for energy and climate change on the White House’s National Security Council.

The United States does not yet export its natural gas.

But the Energy Department has begun to issue permits to American companies to begin exporting natural gas starting in 2015.

Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, said:

“One immediate step the president can and should take is to dramatically expedite the approval of U.S. exports of natural gas.

The United States has abundant supplies of natural gas — an energy source that is in demand by many of our allies — and the U.S. Department of Energy’s excruciatingly slow approval process amounts to a de facto ban on American natural gas exports that Vladimir Putin has happily exploited to finance his geopolitical goals.

We should not force our allies to remain dependent on Putin for their energy needs. Ending this de facto ban and expediting approval of natural gas exports is one clear step the U.S. can take to stand by our allies and stand up to Russian aggression, while creating American jobs at the same time.”

Next to language and history, natural gas is the strongest glue that binds Russia and Ukraine, a source of strength for both but also their greatest vulnerability.

Put another way, natural gas is a gun each holds to the other’s head.

For Russia, energy supplies are as important a hold on Ukraine and the other former countries of the Soviet Union as the Russian Army itself.

Ukraine would freeze without Russian gas, and its flow has been a considerable source of wealth and corruption in both countries.

But Russia is also obligated by contract to provide natural gas to Western Europe, and Moscow remains highly dependent on Ukrainian pipelines to get it there.

Despite the construction of the Nord Stream pipeline that circumvents Ukraine, about 63 percent of all Russian gas exports to Europe pass through Ukrainian pipelines, and the European Union still depends on Russia for about a quarter of its gas.

According to Mikhail Korchemkin, head of East European Gas Analysis, a consulting firm in Pennsylvania, the most important pipelines that run through Ukraine are the ones leading to Slovakia.

They will eventually take gas to Germany, Austria and Italy.

To an extent not always recognized in the West, Russia is a petrostate, dependent on energy exports for up to half of the government’s revenue, with natural gas accounting for a third of that revenue.

Ukraine itself consumes 13 percent of the exports of Gazprom, the state-run megacompany that emerged from the Soviet Ministry of Gas.

Gazprom’s highly profitable European contracts are hugely important to the Kremlin. In 2012, for example, Gazprom booked revenue from European sales of about $49 billion at the exchange rate then, an amount commensurate with its reported profits of $39 billion that year.

But the contracts come with a catch:

Gazprom is legally and financially obligated to fulfill them and has to find alternate sources or pay for what it fails to deliver.

In theory, this gives Ukraine enormous leverage, though Moscow over the years has found ways to intimidate and co-opt Ukrainian officials and avoid a serious shutdown.

In a strong indication of the mutual dependence, Alexei Miller, the head of Gazprom, announced that it would cancel on April 1 a large discount on gas granted to Ukraine as part of a Russian loan deal, made in December to recompense Viktor F. Yanukovych, the president at the time, for abandoning a customs agreement with the European Union.

At the same time, Mr. Miller said that Gazprom would support “offering Ukraine a loan worth $2 billion to $3 billion to cover its debt for last year and pay for current supplies.”

Ukraine’s national energy company, Naftogaz, paid Gazprom about $400 per thousand cubic meters in 2013, a price that was cut to $268.50 under the deal struck in December and that will now end on April 1.

The $400 price is far higher than what most European utilities pay; the average price in Europe in 2012, the last year Gazprom released its annual report, was $313.

Ukraine, saddled with inefficient, Soviet-era industries, already owes Gazprom at least $1.5 billion for gas, with an additional $700 million for January and an estimated $300 million to $400 million for February, even with the discount.

An earlier $2 billion loan from Gazprom has also not been paid, said Dmitri Petrov, an analyst at Nomura in London, as well as prepayments for gas storage.

David Dalton, editor of the Economist Intelligence Unit, said: “Russia has always used gas as an instrument of influence. The more you owe Gazprom, the more they think they can turn the screws.”

The fight in the last few years, since a 2009 confrontation over gas debts that led Russia to shut off the flow to Ukraine and southeastern Europe for nearly two weeks, “has been the struggle for Ukraine to get away and for Russia to yank them back,” Mr. Dalton said.

Ukraine has tried to diversify its sources and reduce consumption, while Russia has tried to build pipelines to circumvent Ukraine.

The 2009 conflict was resolved when Ukraine’s prime minister at the time, Yulia V. Tymoshenko, signed a much-criticized 10-year “take or pay” gas deal with Gazprom that left Ukraine paying a higher price for gas than do other Europeans, who have larger transport costs.

The deal also forced Ukraine to take or pay for 50 billion cubic meters a year.

Even in 2011, Ukraine used only 44 billion cubic meters, Mr. Petrov said, a figure that declined to 32 billion in 2012 and 28 billion last year, when Ukraine was in recession and the gas-dependent heavy industries of the east used less fuel.

Last January, Gazprom demanded an additional $7 billion under the contract as payment for unused gas, but Ukraine refused to pay it, and the demand is considered unlikely to be enforced in any court.

The Tymoshenko deal helped Mr. Yanukovych win power the next year, and in 2011 she was sentenced to jail for an alleged abuse of power.

“While that contract was not a crime, it was a huge error,” Mr. Dalton said. Perhaps not surprisingly, Mr. Putin has always spoken highly of Ms. Tymoshenko.

There was a similar, briefer cutoff of Russian gas to Ukraine in 2006, when Ukraine diverted some gas intended for export to domestic use.

After 2009, Mr. Yanukovych did try to reduce Ukraine’s dependence on Russia by signing contracts for coal gasification with the Chinese and starting two shale gas projects.

In September, he signed a deal with Western oil companies including ExxonMobil, Shell and OMV to develop the Skifsky offshore gas field, a longer-term venture, and Ukraine has tried to import more gas from Hungary and Poland.

But the Russians also responded. Most important, they built the Nord Stream pipeline that circumvents Ukraine and goes directly to Germany, and took over the rest of the Belarus pipeline system.

They are now building another pipeline to the south, called South Stream, scheduled to come online by the end of 2015.

While Nord Stream is being used to near capacity, it can handle only 35 percent to 40 percent of Europe’s imports, meaning that most of the rest still flows through Ukraine.

Europe, too, remains highly dependent on Russian gas — the European Union gets at least 22 percent of its gas from Russia, according to Simon Quijano-Evans of Commerzbank.

Despite efforts at diversification with Norway and Algeria and with liquefied natural gas, as well as some early efforts at shale gas extraction in Ukraine and Poland, Germany still gets about 35 percent of its gas from Gazprom, while France and Italy get about 25 percent.

Europe’s continuing though shrinking dependence on Russian energy, combined with the influence that Russian money and investment have won Moscow in Western Europe and the London financial markets, is another reason that tough sanctions are harder for the Europeans to accept than for the distant United States.

Gazprom is a publicly traded company whose stock is held by investors around the world, but it is a chimera of state and private interests, half-owned and fully controlled by the Russian government.

In past gas pricing and transit disputes, Gazprom emerged as a tool of Russian foreign policy in Ukraine and in pipeline politics throughout Europe.

In Ukraine, contract disputes eroded the credibility and finances of a pro-Western government that was in control from 2005 to 2010, and eased the election of Mr. Yanukovych.

Allegations of corruption are never far from Ukrainian gas deals.

In 2005, a close aide to Ms. Tymoshenko, Oleksandr V. Turchynov — now Ukraine’s acting president, but then serving as the director of Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency — investigated suspected ties between a gas trading company, RosUkrEnergo, which was half-owned by Gazprom and half-owned by people close to President Viktor Yushchenko.

Mr. Yushchenko denied any involvement in illegal deals, but the episode, and the insidious influence of gas in Ukrainian politics, opened a schism in the pro-Western camp.

While Ms. Tymoshenko has conceded that the 2009 deal that two years later sent her to prison locked Ukraine into a costly contract with Gazprom, she has promoted its main achievement as cutting out any corrupt side deals for RosUkrEnergo, surely making many enemies along the way.

Russia’s status as a major oil producer further clouds the gas issue. It is already benefiting from the rise in oil prices owing to the Ukraine conflict.

If gas flows to Europe were to halt, oil prices would most likely rise further. Oil is exported from Russia mostly by tankers and pipelines that pass through Belarus.

And then there is the uncertainty of politics, with new actors emerging in a new power structure that overthrew Mr. Yanukovych, who built a lot of his political support and personal wealth on the gas business.

Already, Ukrainian officials are saying that they do not intend to pay the higher price.

David Zhvania, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, said that in any gas pricing conflict with Russia, “we have plenty of levers to respond.”

In a month, “it will be warm, and then we will announce we need to repair the pipeline, and we will shut it down,” he said.

“Then, they will have to shut off the wells. In this conflict the Russians will end up destroying what could have been a good business, the business of Gazprom.”

With loosely organized groups of street fighters now a parallel authority in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, and many western regions of Ukraine having gas pipelines that carry the bulk of the fuel that crosses into Slovakia, sabotage poses yet another risk to Gazprom’s profits and Europe’s fuel supply.

Yarema Dukh, a spokesman for an umbrella organization representing street fighters who have not disbanded in spite of the emergence of the interim government, said that the organization would respect any decision on gas policy taken by the new political leaders, and that talk of sabotage to harm Gazprom “is nothing more than rumors.”

Sabotage, he said, “would also block gas for the European Union, and these are not our methods,” Still, Mr. Dukh added, “if Russia decides to raise prices, it doesn’t mean we will pay those prices.”

In one respect, however, Ukraine has been relatively lucky, with a fairly warm winter and up to eight billion cubic meters of gas in its storage reserves, Nomura estimates.

Even if Russian gas were cut off again, Ukraine would have enough to get it through the summer, at least.”

So, as you can see, in Washington and at the United Nations in New York, where they speak of ‘man-made global warming’ – they also talk out of the other side of their lying mouths when it comes to the business and powerplay on natural gas.

That is what the Ukraine crisis is really about.

The Obama administration, along with Secretary of State John Kerry went on about ‘climate change deniers’ as if anyone who does not subscribe to the lie of ‘man-made global warming’ is in "denial," when the fact is that anyone who does subscribe to ‘man-made global warming’ does not have both oars in the water and is clearly in denial.

Treacherous streets made for risky travel in the United States during the brutal record-breaking winter of 2014.

Moreover, Russia is closer to the Ukraine than the United States and Russia is also geographically closer to the European continent that the U.S., and yet, rather than to compete with Russia on the fair playing field of natural gas, Congress and the Obama administration would rather saber rattle.

These are the people who claim that ‘man-made global warming’ is a reality when it cannot exist according to the laws of physics and they want Europe (and the Ukraine by proxy) to do natural gas business with them?

That dog just does not hunt.

And when it comes to staying warm during the coming decades of global cooling just ahead, you can bet your ass that in western and eastern Europe, Russia will be considered a prime nation to be nice to if you want to stay warm using natural gas to heat your homes, cook your foods and to heat your water.

Chicago, winter 2014

The onset of global cooling will mean that the United States and the Russian Federation will have to work together to produce and deliver natural gas to the world.

The crooks that actually believe that one nation will dominate natural gas are not playing with a full deck as the climate regime of global cooling that I have forecasted is certainly on its way will be deep and will require all hands on deck for all the nations on this planet.

The ideologues keep saying that Russia is using natural gas as a weapon, but that is not true.

The true weapon is Global Cooling and it is Mother Nature who yields that weapon.

That’s what the Obama administration does not understand.

Manhattan, Winter 2014

But know this:

When global cooling sets in every single last one of you will learn a very valuable lesson and shall learn it quickly.

And that lesson is this:

That it is not governments, nor 'man-made global warming' ideologues and their ignorant pundits who have any say in what goes down when it comes to the Earth's climate.

But rather, it is Mother Nature who has the first, middle and the very last say on the climate and weather.

And you can bet all your marbles that she will on global cooling as well.

Astromet Theodore White's forecast for the arrival of Global Cooling is trending correct as the arctic ice sheet, rather than melting as man-made global warming alarmists have said, is actually growing at a rapid rate.

Everyone, in every single nation, including the United States will have to form an alliance – along with Russia – because global cooling will spare no one – and that means NO ONE.

So, all your fights and conflicts - along with all of your ideologies and all your bullshit will have to come to an END if you want to live to tell the tale in the wake of what is coming:

And that is Global Cooling.

That’s a fact.

The Cardinal Crisis

Has Washington’s Arrogance, Hubris, and Evil Set the Stage for War?

By Paul Craig Roberts

In some quarters public awareness is catching up with Stephen Lendman, Michel Chossudovsky, Rick Rozoff, myself and a few others in realizing the grave danger in the crisis that Washington has created in Ukraine.

The puppet politicians who Washington intended to put in charge of Ukraine have lost control to organized and armed neo-nazis, who are attacking Jews, Russians, and intimidating Ukrainian politicians.

The government of Crimea, a Russian province that Khrushchev transferred to the Ukraine Soviet Republic in the 1950s, has disavowed the illegitimate government that illegally seized power in Kiev and requested Russian protection.

The Ukrainian military forces in Crimea have gone over to Russia. The Russian government has announced that it will also protect the former Russian provinces in eastern Ukraine as well.

As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn pointed out, it was folly for the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to transfer historic provinces of Russia into Ukraine.

At the time it seemed to the Soviet leadership like a good thing to do.

Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union and had been ruled by Russia since the 18th century. Adding Russian territory to Ukraine served to water down the nazi elements in western Ukraine that had fought for Hitler during World War 2.

Perhaps another factor in the enlargement of Ukraine was the fact of Khrushchev’s Ukrainian heritage.

Regardless, it did not matter until the Soviet Union and then the former Russian empire itself fell apart. Under Washington’s pressure, Ukraine became a separate country retaining the Russian provinces, but Russia retained its Black Sea naval base in Crimea.

Washington tried, but failed, to take Ukraine in 2004 with the Washington-financed “Orange Revolution.”

According to Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, since this failure Washington has “invested” $5 billion in Ukraine in order to foment agitation for EU membership for Ukraine.

EU membership would open Ukraine to looting by Western bankers and corporations, but Washington’s main goal is to establish US missile bases on Russia’s border with Ukraine and to deprive Russia of its Black Sea naval base and military industries in eastern Ukraine. EU membership for Ukraine means NATO membership.

Only three countries stand in the way of Washington’s hegemony over the world, Russia, China and Iran.

Iran is surrounded by US military bases and has US fleets off its coast.

The “Pivot to Asia” announced by the warmonger Obama regime is ringing China with air and naval bases.

Washington is surrounding Russia with US missile and NATO bases.

The corrupt Polish and Czech governments were paid to accept US missile and radar bases, which makes the Polish and Czech puppet states prime targets for nuclear annihilation.

Washington has purchased the former Russian and Soviet province of Georgia, birthplace of Joseph Stalin, and is in the process of putting this puppet into NATO.

Washington’s Western European puppets are too greedy for Washington’s money to take cognizance of the fact that these highly provocative moves are a direct strategic threat to Russia.

The attitude of European governments seems to be, “after me, the deluge.”

Russia has been slow to react to the many years of Washington’s provocations, hoping for some sign of good sense and good will to emerge in the West.

Instead, Russia has experienced rising demonization from Washington and European capitals and foaming at the mouth vicious denunciations by the West’s media whores.

The bulk of the American and European populations are being brainwashed to see the problem that Washington’s meddling has caused in Ukraine to be Russia’s fault.

U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House

Yesterday, I heard on National Public Radio a presstitute from the New Republic describe Putin as the problem.

The ignorance, absence of integrity, and lack of independence of the US media greatly enhances the prospect for war.

The picture being drawn for insouciant Americans is totally false.

An informed people would have burst out laughing when US Secretary of State John Kerry denounced Russia for “invading Ukraine” in “violation of international law.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrives in Kiev, Ukraine in early March 2014

Kerry is the foreign minister of a country that has illegally invaded Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and organized the overthrow of the government in Libya.

Then they tried to overthrow the government in Syria, attacks the civilian populations of Pakistan and Yemen with drones and missiles, constantly threatens Iran with attack, unleashed the US and Israeli trained Georgian army on the Russian population of South Ossetia, and now threatens Russia with sanctions for standing up for Russians and Russian strategic interests.

The Russian government noted that Kerry has raised hypocrisy to a new level.

Kerry has no answer to the question:

“Since when does the United States government genuinely subscribe and defend the concept of sovereignty and territorial integrity?”

Kerry, as is always the case, is lying through his teeth.

Russia hasn’t invaded Ukraine.

Russia sent a few more troops to join those at its Black Sea base in view of the violent anti-Russian statements and actions emanating from Kiev.

As the Ukrainian military in Crimea defected to Russia, the additional Russian troops were hardly necessary.

The stupid Kerry, wallowing in his arrogance, hubris, and evil, has issued direct threats to Russia. The Russian foreign minister has dismissed Kerry’s threats as “unacceptable.” The stage is set for war.

Note the absurdity of the situation.

Kiev has been taken over by ultra-nationalist neo-nazis.

A band of ultra-nationalist thugs is the last thing the European Union wants or needs as a member state.

The EU is centralizing power and suppressing the sovereignty of the member states.

Note the alignment of the neoconservative Obama regime with anti-semitic neo-nazis.

The neoconservative clique that has dominated the US government since the Clinton regime is heavily Jewish, many of whom are dual Israeli/US citizens.

The Jewish neoconservatives, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and National Security Adviser Susan Rice, have lost control of their coup to neo-Nazis who preach “death to the Jews.”

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on February 24 that Ukrainian Rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman advised “Kiev’s Jews to leave the city and even the country.”

Edward Dolinsky, head of an umbrella organization of Ukrainian Jews, described the situation for Ukrainian Jews as “dire” and requested Israel’s help.

This is the situation that Washington created and defends, while accusing Russia of stifling Ukrainian democracy. An elected democracy is what Ukraine had before Washington overthrew it.

At this time there is no legitimate Ukrainian government.

Everyone needs to understand that Washington is lying about Ukraine just as Washington lied about Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, just as Washington lied about Iranian nukes, just as Washington lied about Syrian president Assad using chemical weapons, just as Washington lied about Afghanistan, Libya, NSA spying, torture.

What hasn’t Washington lied about?

Washington is comprised of three elements:

Arrogance, Hubris, and Evil.

There is nothing else there.

And Paul Craig Roberts continues with these thoughts.

‘The End could be nearer than you think?’

Kiev, Ukraine, February 2014

The end could be nearer than you think.

Certainly, the propagandist U.S. government does not want any truth available to compete with Washington’s systematic lies.

Washington is desperate to control the explanation of the situation in Ukraine that, as a result of Washington’s incompetence, has resulted in Ukraine falling under control of neo-nazi elements, whose rabid anti-semitic and Russophobic actions and rhetoric have caused Ukraine to split in half.

And again, eastern and southern Ukraine are Russian-speaking former Russian territories added to Ukraine in the 1950s by the Communist Party leadership of the Soviet Union.

These provinces are agitating to be returned to Mother Russia where they certainly belong.

They are determined not to be part of a neo-nazi regime that will be looted by Western bankers and corporations and be forced to host US missile bases that will make western Ukraine a target for nuclear annihilation, like Poland and Czech Republic.

The propagandistic rhetoric issuing from the mouths of the White House Fool and the excrement that the Fool placed in charge of the Department of State is designed to cover up the abject failure of the Obama regime’s plot to install its puppets as Ukraine’s new rulers.

The Obama regime is too stupid to comprehend that its rhetoric is preparing the gullible and ignorant American population for war with Russia.

The neoconservative ideologues, who have been lusting for war with Russia ever since the 1980s when I was a member of the Committee on the Present Danger, will take advantage of the war preparation, which the White House Fool and his State Department excrement are creating with their rhetoric, to start a war that will destroy life on earth.

The neoconservatives are insane.

They believe that nuclear war can be won, and that the US has the advantage to destroy Russia in a first strike.

Americans are so ignorant and gullible that they do not realize that their very existence is on the line, and that the insane neoconservatives who control the weak Obama puppet are determined to cross the line.

If any are still so gullible as to believe that the illegal deposing of the elected government of Ukraine was a “sincere indigenous revolt against a corrupt government,” the delusional should watch this video of the a western-supported Maidan neo-Nazi intimidating the Attorney General of Ukraine.

To understand what is going on in the Ukraine, understand that what you are hearing from the United States government is bullshit.

That’s right – bullshit.

Note this event:

See the Maiden protester in the video below that Washington DC says it supports.

The short fat Ukrainian guy (who is also curiously wearing an NFL Oakland Raiders cap) tries to bully the Ukrainian Attorney General who is wearing a suit and tie.

This is what President Putin meant about ‘unconstitutional acts’ that have taken place in Kiev.

See for yourself ->>

God help the American people.

Their ignorance and gullibility make them an enormous threat to life on earth.

Yes, I know. I have readers who have escaped The Matrix. But the majority of the American population is lost.

War will be the result of the ignorance, gullibility, and stupidity of the American population, its prostitute media, and the hegemonic ambitions of the evil neoconservatives.

The corrupt rulers of Europe will sell out their peoples for American money until they are all vaporized in nuclear explosions.

The total corruption of truth, integrity, and morality that Washington has imposed on the Western world has aligned the West with the powers of Darkness and death.

No greater evil exists than the government of the United States."

The Cardinal Crisis

Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke on the Ukraine crisis at a press conference at his state residence near Moscow on Tuesday, March 4th. Image: Alexey Nikolsky/Presidential Press Service, via Reuters

Isolating Russia? I Don’t Think So.

Mundane Analysis by

Theodore White, mundane Astrolog.Sci

One of the problems with modern world leaders is that they often think that they are in control when they are ignorant of astrological transits.

The leaders of yore always consulted first with mundane astrologers before making any serious decisions or moves as future consequences are almost always never anticipated accurately by those with no skill or knowledge of world transits.

Let’s consider this in the Ukraine-Russia-West Crisis:

In his first public comments on the crisis, President Vladimir Putin held a press conference on March 4th and explained what happened in Ukraine, as he called the ouster of Viktor Yanukovych an “unconstitutional coup.”

Putin accused the United States of provoking a putsch and treating Ukrainian people like “lab rats.”

Putin held out the possibility of Russian troops moving beyond Crimea into the eastern parts of Ukraine, where Russians are the majority population, if “lawlessness” spreads.

“Even if I take a decision to use armed force,” Putin said, “It will be legitimate, fully corresponding to the norms of international law," he added.

But in a hopeful sign in early March, Putin ordered the 150,000 troops conducting military exercises on the Ukrainian border to return to their bases.

“We aren’t going to fight the Ukrainian people,” Putin said.

Meanwhile, in Brussels, NATO held an emergency “consultations” about the situation at the request of member nation Poland, which borders both Russia and Ukraine.

And, tensions remained high in Crimea.

Protesting Ukrainian soldiers at the Belbek military base

On Wednesday, March 5th, troops loyal to Russia fired several warning shots into the air to ward off 300 protesting Ukrainian soldiers at the Belbek Air Base.

Opposing soldiers fired shots into the air to warn.

And some 16,000 Russian troops were guarding the peninsula's ferry, military bases and border posts.

Ukrainian officials denounced the Russian presence in Crimea as an “invasion” but there was little they could do about it.

After this encounter on March 5th, the Ukrainian soldiers had turned back around. No one was hurt.

Meanwhile, in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol, the Russian navy opted not to make good on their threat to take over two of their warships.

Crimean citizens at the port of Sevastopol

Then, as President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry threatened to 'isolate Russia' it is a sure bet that European ministers will resist any sanctions, much less trade sanctions.

And if they do, it will come at a high cost. Germany is already upset with Washington and the Obama administration over the spying on their country through the National Security Agency.

This is confirmed by the world transits of early March as a rift is seen between the United States and the European Union on Russia’s policy in Ukraine’s Crimea.

Now, the unelected ‘unity’ interim government of Ukraine statement at the United Nations that 16,000 Russian soldiers have been deployed to Crimea has caused a frenzy among Western media.

But many have chosen to ignore the facts that those Russian troops have been there since the late 1990s - in accordance with a Kiev-Moscow agreement.

If you look at what much of the mainstream western media has stated since early March, with words like ‘invasion’ and Russia sends 16,000 troops into Crimea’ and “What can Obama do about Russia’s invasion of Crimea?’ – you will note the silliness of all the hyperbole.

First, let's go back to the month of February when transiting Mercury was retrograde and when events turned violent with snipers shooting at Ukrainian police and bystanders were killed in central Kiev:

Kiev in mid-February

It appears that officers of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) who were loyal to the ousted President Viktor Yanukovich apparently hacked into the phones of the Estonian Minister of Foreign Affairs Urmas Paet and High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton.

Then they subsequently leaked their conversation to the Internet.

In the conversation you will hear below, both officials discuss their impressions of what's happening in the Ukraine.

Now, the gist of the entire conversation is that Ukrainian people have no trust in any of the leaders of western-influenced Maidan.

The leaders chosen to run the Ukrainian districts have a 'dirty past,' says Mr. Paet.

And, as you will hear, the most striking thing is what they say about the use of deadly force during the February protests in Kiev - particularly the snipers who killed both protesters and Ukraine riot police officers.

Listen and hear for yourself how Mr. Paet reveals astonishing information that confirms reports that the snipers were working for the leaders of Maidan that the United States supports.

This, as U.S. Secretary John Kerry rolled into Kiev on Wednesday, March 5th with $1 billion dollars and roses.

Hear for yourself the shocking revelation:

It comes in at 8:35 in the conversation below:

‘Back To Crimea’

The situation in Crimea comes just as the Grand Cardinal Cross of spring nears. Now, it is essential for readers to clearly understand what is actually going on in reality against what many are being led to believe.

For one, the Obama administration would be prepared to spend $1 billion to send to an interim government before actual elections take place in Ukraine is suspect enough.

Many Americans ask why not spend that $1 billion in the United States, which is suffering through its fifth straight year of the great recession?

Moreover, the inclusion of the International Monetary Fund before the elections of a new government in Ukraine is also suspect.

Pouring money into Ukraine at this time would only serve to influence those in the country, which has been going on for some time by the U.S. and its non-governmental agencies.

Now, even before monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe can get to Crimea as approved by President Putin, it seems that a senior united Nations diplomat tried to insert himself there on march 5th.

According to AP reports,

"A senior United Nations diplomat who was sent to the Crimea region of southern Ukraine to assess the Russian military takeover there was threatened by armed men at gunpoint on Wednesday, March 5th and aborted his visit a day after it had begun.

The diplomat, Robert Serry, was confronted by a group of 10 to 15 gunmen as he left a meeting at a naval facility in Simferopol, the capital of the Crimea region, according to an account of the incident provided by Jan Eliasson, the United Nations deputy secretary general.

Mr. Eliasson, speaking to reporters by telephone from Kiev, the national capital, said that the gunmen confronted Mr. Serry and demanded that he go straight to the city airport and leave Crimea.

Mr. Eliasson said that when he refused, they surrounded his car and threatened him, but he was allowed to enter a cafe and call Mr. Eliasson. The identities of the gunmen were not clear.

“He is in good shape physically,” Mr. Eliasson said. “He is not kidnapped.”

A journalist for the British network ITV, James Mates, who was traveling with Mr. Serry and witnessed the incident, reported that Mr. Serry was ending the trip.

The United Nations later issued a statement saying “Robert Serry is taking a late flight out of Simferopol and will shortly return to Kiev to continue his mission, which was cut short by today’s incident.”

Mr. Serry, a former Dutch ambassador to Ukraine, now serves as the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process.

Mr. Eliasson said he welcomed the move by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to send monitors to Crimea to look into whether minority rights are being respected.

The United Nations will dispatch the head of its human rights office, Ivan Simonovic, to lead a team that will visit both western and eastern Ukraine, including Crimea.

Mr. Eliasson said he hoped Russia would welcome the deployment of the monitors, since Russian leaders have repeatedly expressed concern about the ethnic Russian population in Ukraine, a minority in the country overall but a majority in Ukraine and some other regions."

'The Facts On Crimea'

This mundane astrologer did some fact-checking and sure enough, the propaganda of the western media – especially that of the U.S. media - have chosen to completely ignore the fact that those same Russian troops they claim have ‘invaded’ Ukraine have actually been stationed in Crimea for over a decade.

The Ukrainian-Russian deal surrounding Russia’s Black Sea Fleet allows Russia to station a contingent of up to 25,000 troops in Ukraine.

In reality, the Black Sea Fleet has been disputed between Russia and Ukraine since the collapse of the Soviet Union back in 1991.

In solar year 1997, both sides finally managed to find common ground and signed three agreements determining the fate of the military bases and vessels in Crimea.

The 1997 deal allows the Russian navy to have up to 25,000 troops, 24 artillery systems with a caliber smaller than 100 mm, 132 armored vehicles, and 22 military planes on Ukrainian territory.

In compliance with the accords, there are currently five (5) Russian naval units stationed in the port city of Sevastopol in the Crimean peninsula:

The 30th Surface Ship Division formed by the 11th Antisubmarine Ship Brigade, which includes the Black Sea Fleet’s flagship guard missile cruiser Moskva as well as Kerch, Ochakov, Smetlivy, Ladny, and Pytlivy vessels, and the 197th Landing Ship Brigade, consisting of seven large amphibious vessels:

The 41st Missile Boat Brigade, which includes the 166th Fast Attack Craft Division, consisting of Bora and Samum hovercrafts as well as small missile ships Mirazh and Shtil, and 295th missile Boat Division.

The 68th Harbor Defense Ship Brigade formed by the 400th Antisubmarine Ship Battalion of four vessels and 418 Mine Hunting Ship Division, which consist of four ships as well.

The 422nd Separate Hydrographic Ship Division, which includes Cheleken, Stvor, Donuzlav and GS-402 survey vessels as well as a group of hydrographic boats.

Besides the naval units, Russia also has two airbases in Crimea, which are situated in the towns of Kacha and Gvardeysky.

Now, according to the facts:

The Russian coastal forces in Ukraine consist of the 1096th Separate Anti-Aircraft Missile Regiment in Sevastopol and the 810th Marine Brigade, which hosts around 2,000 marines.

Several other coastal units of the Black Sea Fleet are located in Russia’s Krasnodar Region, including the 11th Separate Coastal Missile Brigade in Anapa, the 382th Separate Marine Battalion, and a naval reconnaissance station in Temryuk.

At the end of February, Russia’s Federation Council unanimously approved President Putin’s request to send the country’s military forces to Ukraine to ensure peace and order in the region “until the socio-political situation in the country is stabilized.”

However, the final say about deploying troops lies with Putin, who hasn’t yet made such a decision. Putin stressed that deploying military force would only be a last resort.

Now, officials in the Ukrainian Autonomous Republic of Crimea – where more than half the population is Russian – requested Moscow’s assistance after the self-proclaimed ‘unity government’ in Kiev introduced a law that abolished the use of languages other than Ukrainian in official circumstances.

Russia has received 81.7 per cent of the fleet’s ships after paying the Ukrainian government a compensation of US$526.5 million.

Moscow also annually writes off $97.75 million of Kiev’s debt for the right to use Ukrainian waters and radio frequency resources, and for the environmental impact caused by the Black Sea Fleet’s operations.

According to the initial agreement, the Russian Black Sea Fleet was to stay in Crimea until 2017, but the deal was later extended for another 25 years to the year 2042.

Taking what is surely the wrong path (as he has on ‘climate change and other policies) Obama said that his administration was "examining a whole series of steps – economic, diplomatic – that will isolate Russia and will have a negative impact on Russia's economy and status in the world.”

‘A Dying Establishment of Cold War Warriors’

Understand that those in the oligarchy, who are passing on, as well as the baby boomer establishment, are outmoded and have thrown the world into turmoil with all their bullshit. This is a fact.

These ‘cold war’ types simply have nothing more to add to the future; and so they have fallen back on what they know best – which is their own bullshit.

The configurations of the Grand Cardinal Cross will certainly show this for what it is – and that is their bullshit.

Now, the costs of the Ukraine conflict Russia had already become apparent in early march. Consider this: just as the Winter Olympic Games ended where Russia spent $50 billion to hold, the arranged ‘revolution’ in Kiev then spiraled out of control – forcing the Russians to react.

This is typical of the oligarchy and their waning boomer spawn.

They continue to act out in the ways of the late 20th century without a clue as to the implications for the future as they attempt to wrestle control from a region that has historically been Russian.

The building pressures of the conflict showed that by early March, the Russian ruble fell 2 percent against the dollar as $55 billion was wiped off the Russian stock exchange on Monday as the instability shattered investors' confidence.

That amounts to $5 billion more than the cost of the Winter Olympic Games.

And, as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry headed for Kiev to meet with Ukraine’s new ‘unity government’ - the Russian foreign ministry accused him of being a “cold warrior” and demanded the reinstatement of the toppled president, Viktor Yanukovych, who fled Kiev for Russia on 21 February.

Moscow said that an agreement that would have kept him in office for the rest of the year, negotiated in late February, should be reactivated.

But at February’s Kiev negotiations while Mercury was still retrograde, Russia was the only party not to support the deal and refused to sign it – however, it was signed by the German, Polish, and French foreign ministers.

Coming out of the Winter Games in Russia so soon, this decision by Obama appears to confirm that the western powers have long been doing – pushing NATO closer to the borders of Russia – while at the same time threatening Europe’s many economic and social interests with Russia – prime among them energy.

Although the called for sanctions against Russia are supported by some nations in eastern Europe where NATO is situated, as well as in Sweden – regions that are aggressively calling for punitive sanctions against Moscow - when you look at most of Europe and EU foreign ministers you see a different tone.

In the EU: the ministers there are those who are either doves or hawks.

They will continue to want to pursue mediation, as well as to observe the situation in Ukraine. Many will have chosen to resist any kind of sanctions against Russia that seeks to isolate them.

And while Obama is expected to use executive authority to bypass Congress to quickly target senior Russian officials, all of Washington is clearly aware it may struggle to rally support for punitive measures from Europe.

"The most important thing is for us is to make sure that we don't go off without the European community," said Harry Reid, majority leader in the Senate.

"Their interests are really paramount if we are going to do sanctions of some kind. We have to have them on board with us."

The world transits of March, leading into the Grand Cardinal Cross transits of spring show that this is true.

For instance,

At an emergency meeting in Brussels, foreign ministers from Germany, France, Italy and Spain sure enough resisted calls for trade sanctions against Russia.

Russia is the European Union’s third-biggest trading partner after the U.S. and China.

Trade in goods totaled a record 336 billion Euros (that $462 billion) in 2012, and that’s more than 10 times the volume between Russia and the U.S.

Add in exports of services and the value of the Russia-EU relationship raises to $520 billion.

Russia is also the EU's single-biggest supplier of energy.

Oil and gas prices briefly rose sharply early March on fear of supply disruptions through Ukraine, which account for about half of Russian flows.

So obviously, EU ministers spoke about limiting discussions to freezing long-running talks with Russia on visa liberalization that would have made it easier for Russians to visit Europe.

But in Washington, where reactionaries and ideologues continue to rein, they are threatening to kick Russia out of the G8 group of leading economies.

That is something that Germany opposes. Then you have what obviously are nutty heads in Washington DC who started to spread Internet rumors almost from the state on the crisis building in the Ukraine.

Consider this;

German officials were forced to deny reports that came out of Washington that said that when that German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke to President Putin by phone where Putin agreed to the monitoring of the Ukraine crisis by European observers, that Merkel had later told Obama that Putin had “lost touch with reality.”

Merkel denied that she ever said any such thing.

And, let’s remember that the U.S. government, via the National Security Agency, had been tapping Merkel’s private conversations for over 10 ears before it was revealed in the Edward Snowden revelations of massive NSA spying on, well, just about everyone.

Now, what you see here is this:

The boneheads in Washington still do not get that any attempt to resolve the situation in Ukraine must include accepting the truth of what Washington has been doing (secretly) in attempting to force their kind of ‘democracy’ on a nation that for all intense purposes has long been a part of Russian history.

The Grand Cardinal Cross clearly shows that any attempt to resist the truth will only create mounting problems on the problems that already exist.

And for the Obama administration, with low poll ratings, it is very unwise to attempt to try to bull Vladimir Putin and the Russians to come off as being ‘tough’ in order to raise Obama’s low polls.

‘Here’s Proof of What I Mean’

Great Britain’s attempts to ensure any EU action against Russia over Ukraine would exempt the City of London were embarrassingly revealed when a secret government document detailing the plan was photographed in Downing Street.

The Guardian newspaper reported that,

“The document said Britain should "not support, for now, trade sanctions … or close London's financial centre to Russians.”

Photo of the secret British document that says the UK should not support trade sanctions against Russia or close off London's financial district to Russia.

Like other EU countries, and especially Germany, which obtains almost 40% of its gas and oil from Russia, the document said that the UK is reluctant to adopt measures that could damage its still fragile economic recovery.

Rather than stronger sanctions being pushed by the U.S., in Berlin, Angela Merkel is pushing the idea of a "contact group,’ under the auspices of the democracy watchdog the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

This is what Putin agreed to.

As one policy analyst I know said:

“Everyone is up to something - Putin, the U.S., the EU, China, IMF, Oligarchs, Poland, Neo-Nazis, call the group and they're up-to-something in Ukraine - it's a big mess, and Putin maneuvered it all to be the problem of the EU and US.

"Ukraine will get neutered (‘Finlandized’ as Zbigniew Brzezinski suggested) and Crimea will become an autonomous state.

The analyst continued by saying that, "Ukraine will serve as 'the model' for managing future 'Failed States' through the IMF. And the 'Big Boys' will feast on Ukraine's resources.”

‘Digging in At Crimea?’

News reports showed in early March that Senior American officials dismissed claims that Washington D.C. was incapable of exerting influence on the Russian president.

Yet the western media continue to claim that Crimea had been 'invaded' by 6,000 airborne and ground troops in what could be the start of a wider conflict.

It was obvious in early March that Russian forces already long had complete operational control of the Crimean peninsula.

On Monday March 3rd, Russian soldiers cemented their control of Crimea overnight. They seized a ferry terminal in the Ukrainian port city of Kerch, about 12 miles from Russia.

The soldiers were reported to be Russian-speaking, driving vehicles with Russian number plates, but refused to confirm their identity.

Residents of the neighboring port town Nikolayev reported Russian troops had arrived overnight.

It intensified western fears that Moscow will send further soldiers beyond Russian-speaking Crimea into eastern Ukraine.

Russia's Interfax news agency reported that Russian fighter jets twice flew over Ukraine's air space over the Black Sea during that night on March 3rd.

It said Ukraine's air force had scrambled a Sukhoi Su-27 interceptor aircraft and prevented any "provocative actions."

Ukrainian border guards reported a buildup of armored vehicles near a ferry port on the Russian side of the Kerch channel – a narrow sea lane dividing Russia and Ukraine.

A statement from the guard spokesperson said that Russian ships had also been moving in and around the city of Sevastopol, where the Russian Black Sea fleet has a base, and that Russian forces had blocked cell and telephone services in some areas.

Marines watch a Russian ship at the Crimean port of Sevastopol

While the alarm was high in early March, there is also relief in western capitals that the crisis has not yet turned into a shooting war.

"The real danger is that someone just loses their nerves, not out of political reasons, but because it's so tense," said Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German foreign minister.

Hopes of a potential path out of the crisis were raised in New York on March 3rd, when Russia called an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council, prompting speculation among Western governments that Moscow was preparing to compromise.

In the event, however, the two-hour meeting simply descended into a verbal slanging match between the Russian ambassador Vitaly Churkin and his counterparts for the US, UK and France.

In highly undiplomatic language that is rarely heard in the Security Council chamber, a succession of ambassadors accused Russia of flagrantly violating international law and its own duties as a permanent member of the UN body.

Several members also accused Russian U.N. representative Vitaly Churkin of fabricating claims of violence against Russian speakers in Crimea to justify Moscow's military intervention.

"So many of the assertions made this afternoon are without basis in reality," said Samantha Power, the US representative.

"Is Russia justified in invading parts of Ukraine? The answer of course is no. Russian mobilization is a response to an imaginary threat."

The French ambassador, Gerard Araud, said that the Crimea action reminded him of the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia when he was 15.

"Russia seems to be coming back to its old ghosts playing an old fashioned role in an outdated setting."

In comments after the meeting ended, Araud said the outcome was "very disappointing. We are 50 years back," he said.

Great Britain’s ambassador, Sir Mark Lyall Grant, said hopes for the meeting had been dashed.

"We saw nothing about any openness to try and find a political path to de-escalate the situation," he said.

For his part, the Russian ambassador was unapologetic and unbending.

Churkin said that Viktor Yanukovich, the ousted president of Ukraine, remained the legitimate head of state, and he described the leaders of the new government in Kiev as "radical nationalists" and “anti-Russians.”

He asked other council members to imagine that the US Congress had impeached President Obama while he was out of the White House and on a trip to California.

"Would that be democratic?" he said.

He also reminded the French that they had imposed measures to prevent peaceful protesters from wearing masks in the street, and he reminded the Americans that their former president Ronald Reagan had invaded Grenada in 1983 to protect 1,000 Americans.

"We have millions living there [Russian speakers in Crimea] and we are protecting their concerns."

Churkin has some very good points.

And, as for the ‘unity’ government in Ukraine:

Since when does any temporary "interim government" have the constitutional power to conduct such negotiations on behalf of a whole nation?

Especially an interim body with only between 10 and 20 percent of the vote?

And, to prove my point about the dying oligarchy and the nutty ‘cold warriors’ still living in the mid-to-late 20th century, who have brought their outmoded ways and methods into the early 21st century, just have a listen to Senator john McCain.

McCain said that he was "disappointed" by Great Britain’s position and said that European countries were "ignoring the lessons of history.”

Asked if it was right to avoid such sanctions against Russia, McCain said:

"Of course not. I am not astonished, to be very frank with you. Disappointed, but not astonished."

The present situation was "the result of five years of naive relations with Russia, not the beginning of it", he added.

"If the Europeans decide that the economic considerations are too important to impose severe sanctions on Vladimir Putin - which you get from the statement by Angela Merkel today - then they are ignoring the lessons of history," McCain added, thus comparing Mr. Putin's actions with those of Hitler in 1938?

See what I mean?

‘The Grand Cardinal Cross’

Pro-Russian activists hold giant Russian flags during their rally in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk on March 16, 2014.Image: Alexander Khudoteply/ AFP

Now, can you see how all this is shaping up for April’s total lunar eclipse over the United States and the Grand Cardinal Cross that extends into May and part of June 2014?

I warn everyone to mind the planetary signatures this spring. If cooler heads do not prevail then the situation will get much worse.

You hearing me President Obama and the ideologues in Washington DC and the State Department?

And with the March 2nd defection of Ukraine's navy chief, Rear Admiral Denis Berezovsky, Crimea immediately acquired its own navy.

Also, it was my forecast that in March, the people of Crimea would vote in a referendum that would make Crimea officially The Autonomous Republic of Crimea – and that means that Crimea will then become independent from Ukraine.

Population of Crimea:

58.32% Russians

24.32% Ukrainians

12.10% Crimean Tatars

The real danger is in Ukraine proper, between the eastern half of the country that leans toward Russia and the western half of the country that leans toward Europe and the West.

But don’t listen to this mundane astrologer who warned several years ago of the solar year 2014 and the global diplomatic tensions and intransigence that is now taking shape.

The decision of Crimea to join the Russian Federation certainly does have implications that are both strategic and geopolitical.

The union of Crimea and Russia will have come to redefine the region's geography as well as the geopolitical outline of the Black Sea basin.

It constitutes a major setback for US-NATO," says Professor Michel Chossudovsky in his analysis below.

"NATO's longstanding objective has been to integrate Ukraine into NATO with a view to undermining Russia, while extending Western military presence in the Black Sea basin."

'What It Means'

As a result of the March 18, 2014 Treaty that was signed between Russia and Crimea, the Russian Federation will extend control over the Black Sea.

This includes the Sea of Azov and the western coastline that borders on Eastern Ukraine and the Donesk region.

click on map to enlarge

Under the agreement between Russia and Crimea announced by president Putin, two “constituent regions” of Crimea will join the Russian Federation: the “Republic of Crimea” and the “City of Sevastopol.”

Both will have the status of “autonomous regions."

The status of Sevastopol as an autonomous entity separate from Crimea is related to the location of Russia’s Naval base in Sevastopol.

Since the break-up of the Soviet Union, Russia retained its naval base in Sevastopol under a bilateral agreement with Ukraine.

With the signing of the March 18th Treaty, that agreement is null and void. Sevastopol including the Russian naval base become part of an autonomous region within the Russian Federation.

The naval base is not within Ukraine under a lease agreement. Moreover, Crimea’s territorial waters now belong to the Russian Federation.

Russia now formally controls a much larger portion of the Black Sea, which includes the entire coastline of the Crimean peninsula.

The Eastern part of Crimea, including the Kerch straits, are now under Russia’s jurisdiction control.

On the Eastern side of the Kerch straits is Russia’s Krasnodar region and extending southwards are the port cities of Novorossiysk and Sochi.

Novorossiysk is also strategic. It is Russia’s largest commercial port on the Black Sea, at the crossroads of major oil and gas pipelines between the Black Sea and Caspian sea.

The Kerch Straits, from Crimean side, narrow width

Historically, the Kerch straits have played a strategic role.

They constitute a gateway from the Black Sea to Russia’s major waterways including the Don and the Volga.

Aerial view of the Kerch Peninsula

During World War II, the Kerch peninsula occupied by Nazi Germany (taken back by the Red Army) was an important point of transit by land and water.

In the coldest months of winter, it became an ice bridge linking Crimea to the Krasnodar region.

The Kerch straits are about 5 kilometers in length and 4.5 kilometers wide at the narrowest point between the tip of Eastern Crimea and the peninsula of Taman.

Kerch is a major commercial port linked to railway, ferry and river routes.

Of significance, the integration of Crimea into the Russian Federation means that Moscow is now in full control of the Kerch Straits linking the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov.

The Ukrainian authorities are no longer in control of the port of Kerch.

The bilateral agreement between Russia and Ukraine governing the maritime route through the Kerch straights has been scrapped.

The straits constitute an entry point into Russia’s major river waterways.

The Sea of Azov connects with the Don River and the Volga, through the Volga Don Canal. In turn, the Volga flows into the Caspian sea.

The Kerch straits are strategic. The Kerch-Yenikalskiy Canal allows large (ocean) vessels to transit from the Black sea to the Sea of Azov.

Moreoever, the Kerch Straits link the Black Sea to the Volga which in turn connects to the Moscow river through the Volga-Moskva canal.

Full control of the narrow Kerch straits by Russia ensures unimpeded maritime transit from the Black Sea to Russia’s capital as well as the maritime route to the Caspian Sea. (Black Sea- Sea of Azov -Don- Volga Don Canal -Volga -Caspian Sea)

In December 2013 Moscow signed a bilateral agreement with the Yanukovych government in Kiev pertaining to the construction of a bridge across the Kerch Straits, connecting Eastern Crimea (which was part of Ukraine) with Russia’s Krasnodar region.

This agreement was a followup to an initial agreement signed in April 2010 between the two governments.

The Russia-Ukraine 2013 agreement pertaining to the construction of the bridge had, for all purposes already been scrapped before March 16.

Crimea’s union to Russia was already in the pipeline prior to the referendum, it was a fait accompli.

Less than two weeks before the March 16th Referendum, at the height of the crisis in Ukraine, Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev ordered the state-road building corporation Avtodor, or “Russian Highways” “to create a subsidiary company that will oversee the building of a bridge across the Kerch Strait."

This bridge would largely be geared towards train transport routes linking western and eastern Europe to the Caspian Sea Basin, Kazakhstan and China. It is therefore an integral part of Eurasian Project.

Needless to say, the Kerchen bridge project will be fully under Russian ownership and control.

The Kerchen straits are within Russian territorial waters on both sides of the straits.

The Sea of Azov, Eastern Ukraine & Donbas Region

Eastern Ukraine and the densely populated Donetz basin (Donbas region) of Ukraine in which the Russian population constitutes a majority - borders on the Western coastline of the Sea of Azov, which is now in large part under Russian control.

Will the referendum in Crimea set the stage for the integration of part of Eastern and Southern Ukraine into the Russian Federation?

Will it backlash on the illegitimate government in Kiev?

The geographic and geopolitical changes pertaining to Crimea, the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov have a direct bearing on unfolding events in Eastern Ukraine.

Throughout Eastern Ukraine, as well as in Odessa in southern Ukraine, the legitimacy of the interim neo-Nazi government in Kiev has been questioned.

Municipal and local levels citizens’ committees are challenging the authority of Kiev appointed officials.

In the port city of Odessa on the Black Sea, a protest movement demanding a referendum has unfolded.

The referendum, however, does not focus on a union with Russia.

Rather, it is to unseat the US-EU sponsored government in Kiev, which is considered illegal.

It also challenges the adoption by the new government of the neoliberal economic reforms, which are slated to be adopted under the helm of the IMF.

Thousands held a Pro-Russian rally in support of Crimea’s referendum in Odessa, despite calls from the city’s authorities not to participate in meetings. Organizers claim more than 5,000 people joined the demonstration.

“Odessa is against the coup in Kiev, paid for by the West and Ukrainian oligarchs who remained in power with the help deceitful extremists and militants. We are tired of living in poverty and we are no longer going to tolerate the tyranny of oligarchs and officials..."

The people were chanting “Ukraine and Russia – one country,” and “Odessa, be bold, drive the fascists out,” as they gathered in the center of the city.

Protests have developed in Kharkov and Donetsk demanding the holding of a referendum on the federalization of Ukraine:

Protesters, on behalf of Kharkov’s assembly, asked Putin to “guarantee their rights and freedoms” and pass to the United Nations their demands regarding a referendum on the federalization, which they plan for April 27, reported Ukrainian National News (UNN) website.

Additionally, activists asked to deploy Russian peacekeepers to Kharkov region, adding that they fear for their lives and property.

The demonstrators then marched to the nearby consulate of Poland, protesting against Western interference into Ukrainian affairs.

Kharkov protesters also looted the building housing offices of radical-nationalist organizations, including the Right Sector group, reported Interfax-Ukraine.

The activists broke into the building, took out books and nationalist symbols and burnt them.

In Donetsk, pro-Russian protesters questioned the legitimacy of the interim coalition government:

Meanwhile, Kiev sent heavy military hardware to the borders with Russia. Activists in eastern Ukraine regions, including Donetsk and Lugansk, were reportedly blocking trains delivering military equipment from the central and western parts of Ukraine.

Similar rallies were held in Dnepropetrovsk and Lugansk.

In Lugansk the campaign focused on a ‘people’s referendum’ directed against the Kiev interim government:

It was where several thousand anti-coup activists were conducting a public poll by handing out “ballot papers” of “people’s referendum” of Lugansk region.

The poll raised questions of trust in the authorities in Kiev, the possibility of joining the Customs Union following the federalization of Ukraine.

One of the questions was about the international bailout:

“Do you support reduction of social benefits and cancellation of benefits at the request of the IMF?”

“This is for all an opportunity to officially announce their choice. Now we have run out of 5,000 forms, we are rushing to print more,” organizer Irina Gotman told UNIAN.

The Cardinal Crisis

The Aries 2014 Vernal Equinox & The X-Factor

Mundane Analysis by

William Stickevers, mundane Astrolog.Sci

Since the 5th Century onward there has been a consistent pattern of “X-Events."

“X-Events” are unexpected major events that have changed the course of history.

These X-Events had potent long-term global significance that often occurred during the second decade at the start each century.

Many of these game changing historical events often occurred in the middle part of the decade, and correlated to events such as the rise and fall of empires, the military invasions, revolts and social revolutions, political power-struggles unexpected outcomes, religious conflicts, and and the outbreak of major wars to name a few.

Below you will find a list of respective “X-Events” and their respective horoscopes with description:

Late Antiquity – 24 August 410

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The Visigoths Sack Rome for the first time in over nearly 800 years since 390 BC. This event signified the rapid collapse of the Western Roman Empire and the beginning of the “Dark Age” in Europe.

Late Antiquity – 9 July 518: The Justinian Dynasty begins

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The Byzantine Empire under the Justinian Dynasty reached its greatest extent after reconquering much of the historically Roman western Mediterranean coast, including North Africa, Italy, and even Rome itself, which it held for two more centuries.

Early Middle Age – 18 June 618 - The Tang Dynasty (618–907 AD)

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This was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period.

It was founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire. The Tang Dynasty is generally regarded as a high point in Chinese civilization.

Charlemagne united most of Western Europe for the first time since the Roman Empire. His rule spurred the Carolingian Renaissance a period of cultural and intellectual activity within the Catholic Church.

Both the French and German monarchies considered their kingdoms to be descendants of Charlemagne’s empire.

Charlemagne’s death signified the beginning of the end of the Carolingian Renaissance, and the splitting of his vast empire that laid the foundation for the Kingdom of France and the modern state of Germany.

Holy Roman Empire - 30 November 912

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The Kingdom of Germany developed out of the eastern half of the former Carolingian Empire. Otto the Great, was the founder of the Holy Roman Empire, reigning as the German King from 936 until his death in 973.

High Middle Age - 17 June 1013

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In summer 1013, Sweyn Forkbeard, the Viking King of Denmark, successfully launches a successful invasion of England.

On December 25th, Sweyn is proclaimed King of all England in London, forcing the English King Æthelred the Unready, to flee to Normandy.

High Middle Age -3 April 1119 - Knights Templar

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The Knights Templar are founded by Hugh de Payns in 1119. They were initially created to protect Jerusalem and European pilgrims to the Holy Land in Judea.

The Knights Templar were among the most wealthy and powerful of the Western Christian military order.

They also were among the most prominent actors of Christian finance. The organization existed for nearly two centuries during the Middle Ages.

High Middle Age - 15 June 1215 - The Magna Carta

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The Magna Carta is sealed by John of England in 1215. The Magna Carta was the first document forced onto a King of England by a group of his subjects – the feudal barons, in an attempt to limit his powers by law and protect their rights.

The charter is widely known throughout the English speaking world as an important part of the protracted historical process that led to the rule of constitutional law in England and beyond.

Late Middle Age - 23 June 1314

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Robert the Bruce restores Scotland’s de facto independence in 1314.

Robert the Bruce was one of the most famous warriors of his generation, eventually leading Scotland during the Wars of Scottish Independence against England.

Late Middle Age – 25 October 1415 - Battle of Agincourt

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The English army defeats a numerically superior French army in 1415.

The Battle of Agincourt was one of the greatest military upsets in medieval history and a major English victory in the Hundred Years War.

The battle is notable for the use of the English longbow, and is also the centerpiece of the play Henry V, by William Shakespeare.

High Renaissance: 31 October 1517

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The 95 Theses of Martin Luther begins the German Protestant Reformation in 1517. Martin Luther nailed his theses to the door of Wittenburg church, sparking the Reformation of the church and rise of Protestantism throughout Europe.

Age of Discovery – 31 October 1618 - Thirty Years’ War

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Protestants revolt against Catholic oppression; Denmark and Sweden in 1618. This marked the start of the 30 Years War with decades of religious conflict in Western Europe.

Age Of Discovery – 14 November 1715 - First Jacobite Rebellion

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The first Jacobite rebellion breaks out in 1715. The British halt the Jacobite advance at the Battle of Preston.

During this period there were a series of civil uprisings, violent rebellions and insurgencies in Great Britain and Ireland.

The uprising had the aim of returning James VII of Scotland (James Stuart the Old Pretender of England, and later his descendants of the House of Stuart) to the throne of Great Britain after they had been deposed by Parliament during the 'Glorious Revolution.'

This conflict ended with the establishment of the Hanoverians in 1715. They ruled over Great Britain and Ireland, and Hanover, Germany.

Age Of Discovery – 24 June 1812 - The French invasion of Russia

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The French invasion of Russia was a turning point in the Napoleonic Wars in 1812.

The enlightened Congress of Vienna took place in 1815, following the defeat of Napoleon and heralded a century of relative stability across Europe.

Age of Revolution – 4 August 1914 - World War I

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The First World War broke out in 1914. It would become a catastrophic conflict that would claim millions of lives and set the tone for international discord throughout the 20th Century.

A Century After World War I - 20 March 2014 - Washington DC

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Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, “X- Events” (events of low probability that have high international impact) and their number and magnitude are increasing over the past two decades.

The United States, as the world’s lone military, technological, and economic “Superpower” remains the nation to watch over the forthcoming years, as it still has the necessary historical gravitas and political prowess to play a dominant role in changing the course of the 21st Century.

This is key, as the astrological portents of the 2014 Aries Ingress horoscope (Jupiter Ruler of the M.C. on the Ascendant square Uranus in the 10th House and in opposition to Pluto on the Descendant) clearly indicates that the United States and its leadership will be coerced through a series of unexpected geopolitical developments of large magnitude, to make bold make-or-break decisions that will have major impact, along with profound consequences for many nations throughout the world.

The BiWheel Horoscope of the United States:

Mundane Natal To World Transits - 15 April 2014

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Late Morning Rectification for 11:27:40 AM LMT shows that the Jupiter-Uranus-Pluto T-Square alignment makes a direct hit to the U.S. Sun in the 10th House.

It augurs a archetypal outburst in the nation’s collective that will set in motion as series of revolutionary dynamics that have been building up over the past two decades.

It will have been as a result of the gradual breakdown of social institutions, the steady curtailment of the civil liberties, excessive taxation by non-responsive government and the ineffectual leadership and a narrow scope of vision by the generational establishment in power.

The Jupiter-Uranus-Pluto T-Square alignment on the U.S. Sun will begin to disrupt the pervasive influence of “transnational” and private interests in government that continue to direct and shape both America’s foreign and domestic policy.

With this alignment, we can also expect developments that will disrupt the continuing concentration of wealth and expose the intrusive and covert agenda of the national security complex that serves the nation’s advanced oligarchy.

The Uranus-Pluto World Squares

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Uranus and Pluto will make another 90 degree alignment on April 21, 2014.

This is the fifth of seven successive squares which began in June 24th, 2012 and will occur again December 15th, 2014, until makes its final alignment on March 16, 2015.

According to Mundane Astrologer Theodore White:

"The current seven exact squares in the early to mid-Twenty-Tens is about major generational change between [the generational] establishments, where values and principals clash against old, outdated methodologies/ideologies, in favor of fresh reforms and sometimes radical evolution into an emerging new world era."

The most recent Uranus-Pluto square alignment occurred on November 1st 2013, during which it conjunct the heliocentric North Node of Jupiter – the planet of economic expansion and wealth.

During this period, Central Banks worldwide continued to accelerate their Quantitative Easing – digital money printing – to prop up the Bond and Equity markets as global GDP growth stalled and capital generation in nearly every G20 nation fell sharply.

The Grand Cardinal Square 15 April 2014

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The Uranus-Pluto alignment in the Spring of 2014 with Mars stationed retrograde March 1st then turning direct on May 19-20 will amplify the archetypal planetary dynamics.

Mars acts as an 'agent provocateur' on the world-stage as it takes part in the Grand Cardinal Cross alignment with Jupiter, Uranus and Pluto.

The Grand Cardinal Cross represents not only the build up, but the sudden, dramatic upheaval and major reversal of power of oligarchical rule.

Usually change within the collective is gradual, allowing time for the masses to integrate and adapt to new archetypal energies that are unfolding, but sometimes it is quick and explosive.

Thus the Cardinal Grand Cross signifies that civilization has arrived at a crucial “tipping point”, where unsustainable and untenable systems of government throughout the globe – including the United States, will be shaken to the core and begin to breakdown.

Chris Hedges, American journalist specializing in American politics and society explains it best as to why it has taken so long for people to come to terms that nearly all forms of governance is about maximizing corporate profit at the expense its citizenry, when he states:

“The inability to grasp the pathology of our oligarchic rulers is one of our gravest faults.

We have been blinded to the depravity of our ruling elite by the relentless propaganda of public relations firms that work on behalf of corporations and the rich.”

On a global level, the Cardinal Grand Square will also recapitulate the tangible intensification and acceleration of environmental catastrophe and the near-term exhaustion of natural resources of the planet, challenging the very power structure that holds back the expression of the Uranus-Pluto archetypal complex – the Dionysian (Pluto) impulse for collective empowerment and the Promethean (Uranus) thrust for radical change.

Scholar, author, cultural historian Richard Tarnas has stated that the period during Uranus-Pluto alignments correlated with “widespread radical and political social change and often destructive upheaval, massive empowerment of revolutionary and rebellious impulses and intensified artistic and intellectual creativity.”

Also, “unusually rapid technological advance, an underlying spirit of restless experiment, drive for innovation, urge for freedom in many realms, revolt against oppression, embrace of radical political philosophies, and intensified collective will to bring forth a new world.”

Below is a listing of the Uranus-Pluto major alignments, the starting and ending dates, accompanied with the most significant historical events during the 220 year period following the discovery of Uranus in 1781.

Uranus-Pluto Opposition (September 19, 1792 – July 4, 1794)

Events

The French Revolution

United States Bank Panic Of 1792

The Haitian Revolution

The Polish Revolt

The Whiskey Revolution in Pittsburgh, PA and the Monongahela Valley

Polish-Russian War of 1792
Burmese-Siamese War

Uranus-Pluto Waning Square (January 1, 1820 – September 4, 1821)

United States in Deep Recession From the 1819 Panic

Scottish Insurrection in Great Britain

Revolution in Spain

Revolution In Portugal

Revolutionary War Of Independence in Peru

The Greek War of Independence

Ottoman-Persian War

Uranus-Pluto Conjunction (June 25, 1850 – March 23, 1851)

Second Industrial Revolution in Great Britain: Revolved around steel, railroads, electricity, and chemicals

The Taiping Rebellion of China

San Francisco Gold Rush

Winchester Rifle

Breech Loading Cannon

Great Fire of San Francisco

Slave trade Abolished in Washington, D.C., but slavery allowed to continue in the Southern States

Levi Strauss make his 1st pair of Blue Jeans

Harvard Observatory takes 1st photograph of a star (Vega)

First National Women’s Rights Convention Convenes in Worcester, MA

Telegraph connection between London-Paris linked

The first freight train is operated in Roorkee, India

Uranus-Pluto Waxing Square (October 21, 1876 – August 25, 1877)

Great Sioux War of 1876

The Second Rebellion Against the President of Mexico

The April Uprising revolt by the Bulgarian population against the Ottoman rule

The Satsuma Rebellion Against the Meji Government of Japan

Hamburg Massacre in Aiken County, South Carolina

Battle of Little Bighorn River

Anti-Chinese rioting swept the city of San Francisco

Germany in Economic Depression

Rail Road Service in the U.S. Grinds to a Standstill Due To Strike

Uranus-Pluto Opposition (January 31, 1901 – November 6, 1902)

Boxer Rebellion in China

New York Stock Exchange Panic of 1901

The Philippine-American War

Unification of Saudi Arabia War

Anglo-Aro War

The United States becomes the world leader in industrial production making 24% of the world total output, followed by Britain (19%), Germany (13%), Russia (9%) and France (7%)

Uranus-Pluto Waning Square (April 21, 1932 – Jan 17, 1934)

The Great Depression

Constitution Revolution in Brazil

The Aprista Revolt in Trujillo, Peru

The 1932 Salvadorian Peasant Uprising

The Siamese coup d’état end absolute monarchy in Thailand

Populist Revolution in Cuba

Ecuadorian Civil War

Japanese Invasion of Manchuria

Shanghai War of 1932

Chaco War

Colombian-Peru War

Third Reich – Adolf Hitler Comes To Power in Germany

Nation Bank Holiday & Gold Confiscation Act in the United States

Glass-Steagall Act

Securities and Exchange Commission established to oversee Wall Street trading

The United States becomes the world's industrial superpower as its production exceeds the combined output of Britain, Germany, Russia, France, and Japan

Uranus-Pluto Conjunction (October 9, 1965 – June 30, 1966)

1960s' Counter Culture Revolution

Dominican Civil War

United States Occupation of the Dominican Republic

Indo-Pakistan War of 1965

Civil War in Chad

Korean DMZ Conflict

South African Border War

Namibian War

The Colombian Armed Conflict

The March of Intifada in Bahrain

Coup d’état in Ghana

Ulster Volunteer Force was Created to Wage War on the Irish Republican Army

China surpasses the United States as the World’s Next Industrial Superpower?

Limited Nuclear Exchange with China?

Limited Nuclear Exchange with Russia?

Based on previous Uranus-Pluto alignments, in the spring of 2014 we can expect an intensified awakening and galvanization of counter-cultural activity, increase drive for personal freedom, and a re-awakening of movements in many conservative risk-adverse cultures.

Since the beginning of 2014, we have been witnessing the continued intensification and acceleration of social and political breakdown among many nations throughout the globe.

This is due to a weakening economic environment of bankruptcy, monetary debasement, high unemployment/underemployment rates, large scale demonstrations, nationwide strikes and riots in major cities.

It is leading to increasing polarization and political partisanship with governments taking measures against its own citizenry. It will ultimately lead to a radical reconfiguration of the monetary system and global power structure between now and 2020.

From late spring 2014 forward, we can expect a continuing escalation and acceleration of uprisings, large-scale protests, strikes and skirmishes that will begin to unravel and threaten the peace between the great powers in several regions throughout the globe.

There have been the now-historic revolts in Egypt, Libya, Syria, and other Middle East and North African (MENA) states.

Iraq is once again disintegrating after a decade of American “nation-building.”

Greece and Spain are falling apart.

Italy is on the verge of collapsing but hasn’t yet.

France is in a deep recession and its falling into bankruptcy and the United Kingdom is also in a protracted recession that continues to intensify like France, but has the additional burden of an over-populated and volatile underemployed multi-ethnic mix in its major cities.

So, as mundane astrologer William Stickevers has so eloquently outlined and explained, our world is now in the midst of historic and revolutionary changes in this cardinal crisis decade.

The Grand Cardinal Cross of 2014 is the beginning of a new era that shall carry the world through the Twenty-Tens and into the Twenty-Twenties.

Mundane Astrology seeks to avert disasters by means of celestial knowledge of future planetary and stellar configurations relative to the Earth and their impacts on the nations and populations of the world.

How we are to create a healthy era in this early 21st century - one that seeks to reduce conflicts, waste, destruction and loss of lives - depends on each and every one of you.~ Theodore White, mundane Astrolog.Sci

6 comments:

You poured your heart, soul and mind into this! I'd love for you to write more about the solution, in equal proportion to the conflict, but did find your take utterly fascinating. Great research. Great thinking. Thank you for sharing.

Thank you very much! Usually it is really difficult to find people who says what they think and not what is suposed to say. Sorry for my mistakes in writting but i'm not used in writting in english (i'm just a farmer in Spain)

Thank you for all you postings! Since I first read you in 2011, I have poured over what you have written and made notes on my calendar. Your words have inspired me to learn more about the mechanisms of astrology. Even though I know you won't come out with another post for a while, I check your blog frequently just in case and end up rereading what was already posted. Thank you for all the detail.

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MUNDANE ASTROLOGER THEODORE WHITE 'S GLOBAL ASTROLOGY:

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Dedication By Benjamin Franklin ~

"Courteous Reader, Astrology is one of the most ancient of Sciences, held in high esteem of old, by the Wise & the Great.

Formerly no Prince, would make War or Peace, nor any General fight in battle, in short, no important affair was undertaken without first consulting an Astrologer."

"That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above... and that which is Above corresponds to that which is Below - to accomplish the miracle of the One Thing." ~ Hermes Trismegistus

"All Truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third - it is accepted as being self-evident." ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

The Twenty-Tens. We live in changing & challenging times... A new decade is here. I hope to be able to shed a little light on the potentials of our futures - here on Global Astrology.Theodore White,polymathēsMundane Astrolog.SContact/ astro730@gmail.com

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Brotherhood & Sisterhood Of Light: Souls Who Are Awake

About Me

Born in the City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia. A writer, I am also a professional astrologer. Natal Sun in Capricorn. A veteran crime journalist, I grew up in a blue-collar police family and began study of Astrology & Astronomy at the age of 10 as part of a classical education. My teachers were Charles Jayne & Ivy Goldstein-Jacobson. Major influences are Michel Nostradamus, Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī, Claudius Ptolemy, Johannes Kepler, William Lilly, Isaac Newton, C.C. Zain, Lorne Edward Johndro, Alfred Witte, Albert Einstein, Reinhold Ebertin & Robert Zoller.
My interests include world history, literature, meteorology, astrophysics, art, anthropology, geography, mathematics, medicine, aesthetics, geophysics, chemistry & theology.
Told I'm clairvoyant, I can only describe myself as a polymath who learned Natural Astrology as a child. I advanced to Judicial Astrology, interpreting Natal Horoscopes & Secondary Progressions. My expertise ranges from long-range climate/weather forecasting to economics to personal horoscope readings to the astrological world prophecies of Michel Nostradamus - all based on the principles of Mundane Astrology.